Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

8 biting winds from the North Sea. The City of Kingston upon Hull, which will be UK City of Culture in 2017, is a self-contained authority and only forms a part of the East Riding on ceremonial occasions. In this quiet part of Yorkshire men and women, well into the nineteenth century, remained for the most part, throughout their lives, close to the places of their birth. Then the industrial revolution, the growth of coal mining and the building of the canals and railways dragged many away from their homes to the swiftly growing cities and towns in industrial Yorkshire, and particularly to the West Riding and the conurbations of and around Leeds and Bradford. But the Mitchells remained true to their roots. Frank Mitchell’s paternal grandfather, Thomas Mitchell, was well educated. Thomas took holy orders and in 1817 became perpetual curate of Holme on the Wolds, a very small parish to the east of Market Weighton. In 1835 he was also appointed Vicar of Sancton, just to the south of Market Weighton, and he held both positions until 1854. He also became Headmaster of Market Weighton Grammar School. His sons were both more interested in the creation of crops than in the teaching of the young and they became farmers. One son, another Thomas Mitchell, had by the late 1850s established himself at Low Grange Farm, Shiptonthorpe, just to the west of Market Weighton. His farming tasks led him to meet the Thorpe family of Birdsall, a small hamlet just south of the North Riding market town of Malton. William An East Riding background This extract from a Victorian map shows the location of Market Weighton between Pocklington and Beverley, with Hull away to the south-east and the important cricketing village of Londesborough just to the north. The railways through Market Weighton are all long gone, closed half a century ago.