Hornpot Lane

Location of plaque: 70 Low Petergate

WHO knew that baptisms could be such good business?

In September 1540, York merchant Miles Cooke and his wife had a baby son. They planned to have the little boy baptised at Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate. The quickest way for them to get to the church would have been to cut through Hornpot Lane, the little alleyway leading from Low Petergate.

For some reason they didn't do this, and instead walked all the way down Petergate to King's Square, planning to turn left up Goodramgate and get to the church from the alleyway beside Lady Row.

As soon as they reached King's Square, however, they crossed the parish boundary into the parish of Holy Trinity King's Court. Immediately Roger Threpland, a chantry priest from this latter Holy Trinity stopped them and demanded that they bring the baby to his own church for baptism... along with the usual fee.

Mr Cooke ran off to get John Holme, the Rector of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, who was dressed in his surplice ready to conduct the ceremony. The Rev Holme rushed out to confront the Rev Threpland, and the two men began jostling each-other. A joiner by the name of Richard Graves then took hold of the Rev Holme - and was promptly hauled before the Archbishop's Court on a charge of sacrilege for assaulting a man of the cloth...

We know all this from court records, and it doesn't reflect particularly well upon the priest of either church.

But why did the Cooke family take the long way around to Holy Trinity Goodramgate in the first place, rather than taking the short cut through Hornpot Lane?

A clue may lie in the alley's name. In medieval times, there were hornworkers' workshops in this area - along with the associated pits in which they soaked the horn ready for working. The 'pot' part of Hornpot may actually be derived from a Scandinavian word for 'a deep pit in the ground'.

Evidence for these pits was first discovered in 1957-58 during a dig on the site led by Peter Wenham, then head of history at St John's College (now York St John University). Wenham found the remains of a warren of timber-framed medieval buildings, together with large numbers of horn 'cores' and the remains of a pit in which the horn would have been soaked - before it could be worked to produce items such as buttons or knife handles, the horn first had to be soaked to remove the cores.

It was evidence of this process that Wenham had apparently found. A later excavation by the York Archaeological Trust found further evidence of four medieval properties which would have been used by a range of craftsmen, including metal workers, leather workers - and hornworkers.

But what did all this have to do with that fight between two priests over who should have to the right to baptise Miles Cooke's son in September 1540?

Well, the answer may be that the process of soaking horn in pits causes quite a stink. Add to that the noxious fumes from the metalworkers' forges and the risk of fire in the tightly packed timber buildings of the craftspeople, and it is a fair bet that in medieval times this quarter of York was smelly, unpleasant and even quite dangerous. Just the sort of place to be avoided by the respectable family of a newborn baby taking him to be christened at their local church...

Stephen Lewis

For details of more York Civic Trust plaques, visit yorkcivictrust.co.uk