Fimber is a quiet village situated astride the B1251 scenic route to Bridlington in the pleasant rolling countryside of the Yorkshire Wolds.  It lies 20 miles east of York and a similar distance from Bridlington on the East Coast. The nearest towns are the market towns of Driffield and Malton, both of which are about 10 miles away.  Like many other Wolds’ villages, Fimber has a village pond that occupies a central position on the village green. A second pond was also situated on the green but this was filled in about fifty years ago.  Indeed, it appears that the village ponds gave rise to the name ‘Fimber’.  The    ‘Fim’ element is derived from the Old English ‘Fin’ or Old Scandinavian ‘Finn’, meaning ‘coarse grass’, and the ‘ber’ element from Old English ‘mer’ or ‘mere’, meaning a pool.  Thus the name Fimber describes a ‘pool amidst the rough, course grass’. 

(Above) Fimber Church - Photo © Alison Stamp

To the north of the Parish is the large farmstead of Towthorpe, the only other site of significance within the Parish.  This farmstead occupies the site of the deserted medieval village of Towthorpe, the remains of which are still visible as grass-covered earthworks in the surrounding fields.  The name Towthorpe has Danish origins.  The element ‘Tow’ is derived from the personal name, Tove, Tuve, or Towi, and ‘thorpe’ is Old Scandinavian for farmstead or hamlet.  So Towthorpe means ‘Tove’s Farmstead/Hamlet’.

From about 3500 BC the process of land clearance and settlement would have been occurring on the Yorkshire Wolds.  During the period 3500-1700 BC the foundations of the man-made landscape were being established - although the associated settlements would probably have been migratory within defined areas as populations sought to maximise the advantage of soil quality and climate.  The earliest direct evidence for settlement activity at Fimber appears in the Neolithic period (3500-1700 BC). The work of the local archaeologist J R Mortimer (Forty Years’ Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire) and a more recent study by Siriol Collins (An Archaeological Study of Land Use at Fimber on the Yorkshire Wolds) indicate that the area around the parish of Fimber is rich in archaeological finds of the Neolithic period and later.  During a large part of this period, the climate would have been warmer than today and more supportive of the endeavours of the early farmers.  Neolithic evidence in the form of pottery ware, flint tools (axes, scrapers, chisels and knives), as well as storage pits and concentrations of worked flint, is abundant.  The main concentrations of Neolithic debris have been found around the centre of the present-day site of Fimber and in fields alongside the Towthorpe lane. This is probably a result of the lands in question being regularly walked for many years by local people, notably Mr Ken Wright, a long term resident, local farmer and amateur archaeologist.

Evidence for Bronze Age activity comes almost entirely from the excavations carried out by Mortimer in the nineteenth century.  The Early Bronze Age period runs from around 2000 BC to about 1300 BC.  The three main types of earthworks which we find from this period in the Fimber area are embankments, hollow-ways and barrows.  The Late Bronze Age is the period from around 1400 BC to about 500 BC, and archaeological evidence for this period comes almost entirely from linear earthworks such as embankments.  J R Mortimer located and recorded them with great care and accuracy, but their actual purpose remains a puzzle.  From about 600 BC, iron began to supplant bronze as the principal working material.  Evidence of Iron Age culture in the Fimber area is in the form of square barrow crop marks.  Burial beneath such barrows seems to have appeared in the middle of the fifth century BC and is characteristic of the ‘Arras Culture’, a regional culture confined to East Yorkshire.  It was possibly around the fifth century BC that the first settled village of Fimber was established.  Celtic invaders introduced settled farming in Britain around this time.  Where once the soil had been tilled by hand, the Celts used an ox-drawn plough and with this came the regular system of fields.   Agriculture of this kind led to the permanent farm and the settled village.

With three major Roman roads running through it, and two junctions of these roads, the Fimber area must have seen significant activity during the 400 or so years of Roman occupation.  Roman coins have been discovered in the area of Fimber Church, south of Towthorpe on the Malton road, and also at Blealands Nook.  All these sites are near to the roman roads, but only at Blealands Nook did the number of coins found suggest anything other than casual loss by persons travelling along these roads.  Finds of Roman pottery show a similar distribution to that of the coins.

In AD 410 the Roman legions were recalled to Rome to defend it against barbarian attacks, and the island of Britain was left to fend for itself.  Having no armies left, the British people were left open to attack by the Scots and Picts and, finally, under the ‘proud tyrant’ Vortigern, imported Saxon mercenaries to defend the East Coast against the Scottish invaders.  Around AD 430, these Germanic peoples were starting to arrive in large numbers and over the next 200 years expelled most of the native Britons from England, pushing them back to Scotland and Wales.  The Anglo-Saxons eventually settled and set up kingdoms of their own.  Fimber would have been in the kingdom of Northumbria.  Actual archaeological evidence of this time was found by Mortimer, who recorded the discovery of two bodies close to the south side of the present day church.  A further six burials were discovered about 70 metres southeast of the church.  These date from the sixth or seventh centuries but it is not clear whether the burials are of Anglo-Saxons or British.

After the Battle of Hastings, the lands previously held by the Anglo-Saxons and Danish thanes were forfeited and handed out to William’s followers.  Eventually, in 1069, after a particularly serious uprising supported by the King of Denmark, William decided to teach the Saxons and Danes an unforgettable lesson.  He carried out his ‘harrying of the north’, the only act for which he asked forgiveness on his deathbed.  The devastation was so severe that some villages were still described as ‘waste’ seventeen years later in the Domesday Book.  These included Fridaythorpe, Huggate, Raisthorpe, Thixendale and Towthorpe.  The village of Fimber is not mentioned directly in the Domesday Book but it seems likely that it suffered the same fate as its neighbours.  There is a chance, however, that Fimber may, at the time of Domesday, have declined into an inconsequential settlement. Towthorpe, despite its treatment at the hands of the  Normans, is mentioned in Domesday, although only as waste land.

In medieval times the settlement at Fimber would probably have been on a smaller scale than the typical village of thirty to forty households, with the peasant dwellings gathered around the green or along one or two streets; the Norman Church and a Manor House would have completed the picture.  The village would have been surrounded by two, three or more large, open, arable fields, which were subdivided into strips on the ridge and furrow pattern.  Villagers were each allocated a number of strips, which were distributed across the whole field system.  Beyond the arable zone lay areas of unenclosed common pasture, meadow and woodland.

There is little physical evidence of the existence of a manor house at Fimber but there is still, today, a Manor Farm.  This lies in North Street, opposite the village pond.  The original Manor House of Fimber must have been located in this vicinity and Adrian Potts, the current owner of Manor Farm, suggests that the site of the old building was in the fold yard of the present farm.  The land behind the present day Manor Farm is known as Hanging Hill.  It appears that from around the seventeenth century the Lord of the Manor of Fimber was given powers to try criminals. If found guilty of a capital offence they would be taken to the gallows set up on Hanging Hill and executed in public.

The  Enclosure of lands in Wetwang and Fimber (1803) was supervised by Joseph Dickinson, Isaac Leatham and William Whitelock, the commissioners appointed to divide, set out and allocate the lands, common pastures, commons and waste lands. In all, some 1,840 acres of land were involved, along with the alignment of public carriageways and highways, stone quarries and mortar pits.  The first attempts at educating the children of Fimber were recalled by Mortimer.  Around 1830, he attended a small school kept by a labouring man’s daughter known as ‘Aunty Jane’.  She was probably Jane Medd who taught about half a dozen very small children in her father’s cottage, which was situated at the extreme south-west of Fimber village, close to the south side of the old coach road from York to Bridlington.  There is no doubt that the villagers of Fimber owed a debt of gratitude to the pioneering works of ‘Aunty Jane’ for it was not until 1865 that a purpose-built school was established in Fimber, endowed by Sir Tatton Sykes.

The site on which the church of St Mary stands has been a sacred site for over 3000 years for the building is constructed over a prehistoric burial mound or tumulus.  Of course, we have no record of what kind of ritual was practised there but there can be no doubt that it was a sacred site in Bronze Age times judging by the complexity of entrenchments, hollow-ways and burial chambers to be found in the vicinity.  The first place of Christian worship in Fimber dates from before the Conquest and was probably Anglo-Saxon in origin.  It was common practice to site Christian places of worship on pagan sites to annex the aura of reverence in the service of Christ.  The foundations of this first church, a substantial building for the area, were found when the second church, the Chapel of Ease, was demolished to make way for the present church of St Mary.  Construction of the present church of St Mary at Fimber began in 1858, the foundation stone being laid by Sir Tatton Sykes, its benefactor.  The architect was G E Street and it was completed in 1871 at a cost of £7000.  The first Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist Chapels were constructed early in the nineteenth Century.  Both were rebuilt in 1863: the Wesleyan Chapel at a cost of £200 and the Primitive Methodist Chapel at a cost of £180.  The Primitive Methodist Chapel stood next to Elm Tree Farm on ground given to the church by the Horsley family.  The Wesleyan Chapel was located in what is now the garden of Mary and Stephen Walker’s home