Asselby...

When I left West Witton, in Wensleydale, many years ago, I vowed I would never again live in a village. So here I am, the newest homesteader in Asselby, an entirely unremarkable village in East Yorkshire. The Old Sunday School was the big attraction, of course, but it’s also handy to be over the road from the village pub. So many villages are losing their pubs. If the Black Swan were to close, there would be nowhere for the locals to congregate and slag off their neighbours.

Unusually, the village of Asselby is on a cul de sac. Drive a couple of miles further and you reach Barmby on the Marsh, and another pub, at the confluence of the Rivers Derwent and Ouse. From here there’s a panoramic view of Drax power station. In years gone by there was ferry across the river; now, though, Barmby is literally the end of the road.

Asselby is wedged between Howden and Goole. Howden is an attractive little market town, with a partly ruined Minster, while Goole is a bit like Barrow in Furness: while you can’t imagine any good reason for going there, once you get there you find it’s not as bad as you’d imagined. And that’s high praise for Goole. I’ll be going to Goole library tomorrow, to see if the archivist can help me find a date for the Old Sunday School. My guess is about 1850.

Just licensed: Otley's statue of Thomas Chippendale, wearing the disappointed expression of a man trying to assemble an IKEA bed-frame...