What to See in Beverley - Top Sights and Attractions

Sports venue in England. Beverley Racecourse is a thoroughbred horse racing venue located in the town of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

Racing in Beverley can be documented as far back as over 300 years ago, and the founding of The Jockey Club in 1752 really formalised its presence in the town. With the founding of The Jockey Club, the occasional racing at nearby Westwood Pasture was recognised, and Beverley Racecourse was founded. An annual meeting at Beverley was first established in 1767. Before that races had only occasionally been run there. Then, for a short period between 1798 and 1805 racing once again stopped. Later in the 19th century a three-day meeting was taking place annually in the week after York's May meeting. In 2012, Beverley hosted racing on 19 days. Its most prestigious races being two Listed races - the Hilary Needler Trophy for two-year-olds in May and Beverley Bullet Sprint over 5 furlongs in August for three-year-olds and up.

The racecourse is a right-handed flat course, that is just over 1 mile 3 furlongs. It is predominantly flat but with a stiff, uphill finish and tight turns. Beverley has the most pronounced "draw bias" on a UK racecourse on its 5 furlong course. The sharp right hand bend and the fact that the ground runs away to the left make a low draw (i.e. on the inside rail) much more advantageous than a high draw (i.e. on the wide outside and on ground sloping right to left).

The first grandstand was commissioned for the racecourse on 22 May 1767 at a cost of £1,000. A £90,000 stand was opened in Tattersalls enclosure in 1968.

In August 2018, it was announced that planning permission was being sought for a £4.8 million grandstand to replace the existing 1960s structure, with an expected completion of April 2021.

It has been described as an "unpretentious but agreeable" racecourse.

As of July 2019, 10 horses have died at the racecourse since 2007.^[2]

11 Ladygate is located close to the market place and centre of the historic town of Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. This unassuming building represents what would have been normal and common in the middle ages when the town prospered from the wool trade. Ladygate has another timber-framed building of 16th or 17th century origin at 19-21 Ladygate. The street which runs the full length of the market place is predominately consists of later 18th and 19th century dwellings and businesses.

This 14th-century building is constructed from timber-frames brick and a clay pan-tile roof. The limited 13 feet width of the property was determined by the beam of the Hanse cogs bringing timber from Scandinavia and Poland into the docks probably at Hull or Beverley Beck. This two storey shop has a loading bay above the shop front and a wooden staircase at the rear. The timber framing can be seen along the passageway to the left of the building.

The shop keeper would have lived above the business and as the property would have been let as just the walls and floor, the tenant would have taken the staircase with them when the lease ended. This building's timber framing has been dated by taking a core of wood from its timber. The sample would be then examined under a lower power microscope to compare the width and number of tree-rings to that of a known date. This is known as Dendrochronology the scientific method of dating using the annual nature of tree growth. The building is listed as Grade II.^[6]

River in England. The Beverley and Barmston Drain is the main feature of a land drainage scheme authorised in 1798 to the west of the River Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The area consisted of salt marshes to the south and carrs to the north, fed with water from the higher wolds which lay to the north, and from inundation by tidal water passing up the river from the Humber. Some attempts to reduce the flooding by building embankments had been made by the fourteenth century, and windpumps appeared in the seventeenth century. The Holderness Drainage scheme, which protected the area to the east of the river, was completed in 1772, and attention was then given to resolving flooding of the carrs.

Embanking the River Hull, and carrying water away from the carrs in a lower level channel was suggested by several engineers, but there was opposition to making the scheme really efficient. Some came from the Holderness Drainage, who insisted that any embankments must ensure that land to the west of the river flooded before their own area was threatened, while an outfall to the Humber was resisted by the Port of Hull, who wanted the water to enter the river to sluice silt from its mouth, known as the Old Harbour. The Beverley and Barmston Drainage Act was finally obtained in 1798, and work began. Water from the north east of the region was diverted to a new sea outfall at Barmston, and 23 miles (37 km) of drainage cuts were constructed, the main channel running broadly parallel to the river, but following a straighter course.

Although more efficient than the Holderness scheme, flooding remained a problem, because of the restrictions place on the height of embankments. A route for an outfall to the Humber was blocked by numerous roads and railways, an attempt to dredge the Old Harbour in 1864 proved disastrous, and pumping failed, because the water overtopped the low banks further downstream, and re-entered the drain. However, in 1880, agreement was reached with Holderness Drainage, and a joint scheme of dredging the river and raising the banks on both sides of it ensued. Steam pumping stations at Arram Beck, later replaced by one at Wilfholme, and at Hempholme contributed to the success of the land drainage scheme.

More recently, the organisational structure has changed. Henry VIII's Statute of Sewers, dating from 1531, was swept away by the Land Drainage Act 1930, and responsibility passed through six bodies, ending with the Environment Agency in 1995. Local drainage channels were managed by an internal drainage board, and again responsibility has changed as the three IDBs managing the area have gradually merged. Steam pumping was replaced by diesel, and subsequently by electric pumps.^[7]