Information about the work of Ian Carstairs MBE
and how he and the Charity he helped to found came into the village of Thorganby and contributed to its way of life.

In 1989, Stephen Warburton, Janet Knowlson and Ian Carstairs established CC.T., a countryside conservation Charity with the aim of distributing small grants from the interest earned on an honorarium they had invested. But within a year English Nature had sought help to acquire Ellerton Ings, an internationally important flood meadow alongside the Yorkshire River Derwent and the adjacent Ellerton Abbey Garth, the Scheduled Ancient Monument site of a 12th Century Gilbertine Priory.

With only the hope of gaining grants, the trustees embarked on the first of many projects, which has taken them on an extraordinary journey through the labyrinth of designations and consent procedures as well as a unique experience in making the most of an acquisition.

The Derwent Ings, covering some 1,000 hectares have in large part been farmed traditionally for perhaps a thousand years. In winter the twelve-mile long flood plain turns into a vast lake attracting tens of thousands of wintering wildfowl and waders.

In Spring, the flower-filled fields are home to a wide range of breeding birds, including a handful of the globally threatened Corncrake.

In recognition of its significance, the valley is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, EU Special Protection Area for birds and Candidate EU Special Area of Conservation. Half of the designated area is also a National Nature Reserve.

The Abbey Garth has not fared so well. Bulldozing, underdraining and ploughing have seriously damaged the surface features. Urgent effort was therefore required to stabilise the conditions of this unresearched site.

Within two months the funding package was complete including support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

With acquisition, the Scheduled Ancient Monument was stabilised by reseeding the field with low productivity grasses through a once-and-for all management agreement with English Heritage. An application was also made to English Nature for C.C.T. to become an approved body under the terms of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. With this status confirmed, the Trust was able to designate the Ings land a part of the Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve.

Further support for the work at Ellerton then came through concluding one of the earliest Countryside Stewardship agreements - widely recognised as the best thing ever devised by the Countryside Commission.

To maintain and improve the habitats of both SSSI and Scheduled Ancient Monument, mowing and grazing licences were issued to local farmers. These provide for a single haycut of the ings after 1st July followed by ‘aftermath’ grazing with sheep until the end of October, and low intensity grazing of the Abbey Garth with cattle to create the tussocky conditions favoured by ground nesting birds.

In 1991, the trustees were surprised to learn that withdrawal of support notices affecting their land, had been posted under the provisions of the Coal Act, especially since the local authority searches at purchase had not indicated any planning consents which might adversely affect the site.

Investigation revealed a complex situation. Where coal is worked, the lateral limit of subsidence runs up to 0.7 of the working depth of the seam beyond the point where the coal is extracted. Although the planning consent boundary did not impinge on Ellerton Ings in East Yorkshire, the lateral subsidence beyond the limit of working allowed in the Selby coalfield in North Yorkshire would.

Following legal advice, the trustees concluded that there was nothing they could do. This, as it turned out, could not have been further from the truth.

Having reseeded the Abbey Garth, attention turned to the neighbouring church wall. Built in the mid 1800s, it, like the church it surrounded, was at risk of partial collapse.

Approaches to the Diocese of York revealed that finding a new alternative use for the Church was obstructed by the active church yard on one side and the Scheduled Ancient Monument surrounding it on the others.

To try to save this critical landscape feature an offer was made to provide a licence for access and to site a septic tank on CCT’s land. In the event, no potential occupant emerged and the church faced the real prospect of demolition.

This was averted when the Church Commissioners agreed to give the building to a new charity to be spawned by CCT trustees - the Ellerton Church Preservation Trust (ECPT). While the principle was easy to establish, carrying it out was a rather more testing task.

Finance was crucial. The new trust could not take on ownership of the building unless all consents and funding were in place, least they should find themselves with obligations which could not be fulfilled.

As a Grade II listed building no grant was available from English Heritage, though CCT did argue, without success, that it should be upgraded to Grade II* on landscape grounds which might have unlocked the potential for support.

The arrival of the Heritage Lottery Fund came just in time for Ellerton Church. One of its very early grants in 1995 at last ensured that the building could be transferred and works eventually begin, though it took another two years before a start could be made.

Meanwhile emergency works to stabilise the roof and to board up the windows to stem increasing damage from both weather and vandalism had become essential. This brought its own special problems.

When the people left, avian occupants moved in, including a pair of barn owls which nested regularly in the derelict structure. Unless they could be encouraged to nest elsewhere, repair work might not be able to progress.

Listed building consent enabled a new barn owl opening to be created with a nest box behind high on a gable wall and all openings throughout the building were progressively closed up. Miraculously the owls took to it readily and bred successfully the very same year.

With CCT’s involvement at Ellerton, a local farmer Len Charlesworth offered the trust the chance to acquire a part of his ings, another glorious flower -filled meadow. To mark their land, the trustees introduced their own inscribed ‘dolestones’, created by Peter Maris a carver from York Minister, to delineate the boundary in this fenceless landscape.

More importantly this new friendship cemented Len’s interest to help organise activity on the ground.

Progress towards the transfer of the church was complicated and painfully slow. An amended redundancy scheme under the Pastoral Measure even had to be prepared for submission to Her Majesty the Queen in Privy Council

Faculties were also required for works to provide services and drains and arranging the access was similarly protracted. To comply with Charity Commission rules, CCT had to engage its land agents to formally report on the implications of the new access and other rights as they were viewed as diminishing the value of the land.

Proposals to site a septic tank and its drainage fields within an archaeological Scheduled Ancient Monument raised substantial issues too. Firstly the areas where buried archaeology might be located had to be identified. Several techniques were used. Aerial photographs taken at monthly intervals for a year proved highly successful when early Autumn rain brought a flush of variation in the lushness of grass, revealing the broad framework of the monastic site below.

Magnetometer and resistivity research over a small area were than used to fine-tune the layout of the remains in the immediate vicinity of the church. Even these non-invasive investigations required Scheduled Ancient Monument Consent, as did the need to excavate a small trial pit under archeological watching brief to conduct percolation tests for the soakaway.

Ironically, having gained agreement on the principal of siting the septic tank within the Scheduled Ancient Monument and identifying the best location, when it came to the test, the water wouldn’t drain away and the sewage system had to be dropped from the project.

During preparation of the specifications for works, research in Hull University and Lambeth Palace Library uncovered the original architect’s specifications and design drawings. These showed that the church had been constructed substantially from it mediaeval predecessor -, part of the Gilbertine Priory - to the design of one of the great Victorian architects, John Loughborough Pearson.

In the latter stages of the transfer of the building to the new Ellerton Church Preservation Trust the issue of the Selby coalfield and subsidence emerged once again.

Under the terms of the 1994 EU Habitats directive, incomplete planning consents which might have a significant adverse impact on the Integrity of the EU Special Protection Area had to be reviewed by the local planning authority and little progress appeared to be being made.

With CCT land directly affected and facing the prospect of years of energy-sapping controversy, an overture was made to North Yorkshire County Council, RJB Mining and English Nature that CCT might act as an ‘honest broker’ to try to help resolve the issue for the whole Lower Derwent Valley.

Through goodwill, a ground-breaking solution was achieved and in an unusual move, English Nature, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and CCT voluntarily entered into a section 106 agreement with the County Council and RJB Mining to conclude the arrangements by guaranteeing the company access to their land for monitoring . A potentially very expensive problem had been amicably resolved.

Work commenced at Ellerton Church in Autumn 1997, when villagers undertook a major clean-up operation, including removal of 90 barrowloads of pigeon guano from inside the church, grubbing-up damaging elder trees and recovering more than 3000 fallen bricks.

While clearing the base of a wall Dave - one of the locals - unearthed a beautiful lettered stone bearing the inscription "+ Johannis de Wyntringham canonicus" . Research in York Minster library confirmed it to be the grave-marker of one of the monks of the mediaeval Priory in the 1350s.

Once scaffolding was erected, many major and unexpected problems were discovered: almost nothing was holding the spire together; an iron ring built-in in the 1840s to hold the bell turret together had corroded and expanded, bursting the face from the stones and lifting the entire spire from its bed; the inside of the spire had been almost completely scoured away by the action of wind, rain and frost; the stone facing of the gables, lacking a link to their brick core were literally peeling away; and the weight of the coping stones, which had not been bonded to the gable slopes was forcing the walls apart. Virtually nothing seemed to be holding the upper building together.

Urgent action was required to dismantle and rebuild the spire and remedy other problems. To not have acted immediately could have been catastrophic, but by doing so the costs incurred have had an unavoidably impact on the overall budget.

Notwithstanding the technical and remaining financial challenges, April 23rd 1998 saw the first real visible sign of success - a new gilded cross was placed on the top of the spire. The Vicar blessed it with a prayer he had specially written and ‘christened’ it with a bottle of home-brewed beer.

The following Sunday, at the exact hour on the 150th anniversary of the consecration of their Church - 3.00 pm 26th April 1848 - 70 villagers met to see and celebrate the progress being made.

While a new future dawns for Ellerton Church, other work at the site is prizing open a window on the distant past. Analysis of rich peat deposits laid down after the last ice age lie under Ellerton Ings by the Humber Wetlands Project, will help to build a picture of the ancient environment of the area.

The roof and upper stonework of Ellerton Priory church, now beautifully repaired, are once more asserting themselves as a sharp and vital feature in a rich, complex and magical landscape as a symbol of constant human activity stretching back at least 900 years!

The work of CCT, ECPT and others at Ellerton provides a composite expression of natural, cultural and religious history, based on a combination of palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, historical, ecological, and architectural research - a rare spectrum of information spanning a continuum of many millennia. It is intended to present this unique record inside the church, which will be maintained as a quiet space for contemplation when complete.

A once unloved and uncared for building set in a landscape of immense cultural importance is gradually being taken back into the hearts of local people. 

Ian Carstairs

1 August 1998