Eastrington has always been a predominantly agricultural village. It is perhaps less so today and there are several areas of new housing where there were once farmyards. Unlike in previous centuries most inhabitants leave the village to work.
The village landscape
Eastrington was an open village with several owners of the land rather just one family, as at nearby Saltmarshe, for example. Until the early 19th century there were three open fields around the village – West field, East or Mill field and Braggitt field, as well as other areas of land such as Tow Garth, Innhams and the Farmses.
There was also a village common, which adjoined the larger Bishopsoil common, as well as a village windmill and pinfold. The open fields were enclosed in 1822 and some new farm houses were built although most farmers continued to farm from their houses, foldyards and barns within the village itself.
Village life
Few families have remained in Eastrington for more than a century, although the Holmes, Lilley and Scutt families came in the nineteenth centuries and are still farming today, whilst other long established families include the Hoggards and Kays. Most farming was, and is, arable, with flax and teazles being grown in the 1800s and wheat, barley, oil seed rape, peas, potatoes and sugar beet being popular today. Some farmers keep dairy and beef animals, some a few sheep, and there is an intensively farmed duck unit and a riding school.
Most everyday requisites were once available within the village although the market town of Howden is only four miles away. Eastrington had its own blacksmith, butcher, saddler and joiner within living memory and today [2020] there is no shop or post office. There is a hairdressers’ and a garage . Until 2015 keeping Eastrington’s name to the fore was the philatelic business run until his death by Mr Dennis Hanson, sending stamps on ‘approval’ for many years to children all over the country.
There was also a village brickyard from about 1840 until its last owner, Mr Cecil White, closed it in the 1960s. Its site is now a popular nature reserve, although for a time it was a council-operated rubbish tip.
Eastrington school
There has been a school in Eastrington since 1722, when Joseph Hewley left a house for the master, a barn for the school, and land, the rent from which would pay the master so that village children could be educated. This ‘thatched school’ was rebuilt as a board school in the nineteenth century and has now been replaced by a newer building dating from the 1960s.
Staff names include headmasters Messrs Freer, Bramley, Thomas and Coates and teachers Mrs White, Mrs Leadill and Mrs Watson.
Changing times in Eastrington
One of the biggest changes Eastrington has seen was the coming of the railways. In 1840 the Hull to Selby line was opened, with a station to the south of the village. In 1885 the Hull and Barnsley line was opened, carrying mainly coal but also passengers from the station slightly north of the main settlement (and now the site of Holmes Park). Not only did the trains provide transport for farmers’ produce – herbs, soft fruit, potatoes and sugar beet – but they also were a source of easy travel for villagers to Hull and Leeds, as well as employment for much of the male population of the village. Only the original Hull and Selby station survives, without the stationmaster’s house and adjoining buildings, but still providing a regular passenger service.
Over 100 Eastrington men fought in the First World War and eighteen were killed. In World War Two the village lost five men and was lucky to escape any bombing. However, the village was near a bomber airfield at Holme on Spalding Moor and another at Breighton; many foreign airmen, serving at these bases, were given Sunday dinner and tea by villagers, and regular dances were held in the village hall and at the Shire Hall in Howden. There was severe bombing at Hull and several evacuees were sent to Eastrington, some of whom stayed and made their lives in the village.