The history and heritage of Pickering

From glacial lake to market town

Pickering sits where the moors meet the Vale of Pickering, and it was first settled at the end of the last Ice Age on the shores of a glacial lake, a spot where early people found wood, stone, game, fish, fresh water and fertile soil all in one place. It remained a settlement through the Anglo-Saxon period, then grew under Norman rule in the shadow of its new castle, at the heart of the royal Forest of Pickering and long tied to the Duchy of Lancaster. Its Monday market has run for centuries, and the sloping Market Place and the streets around it form a Conservation Area of listed buildings today.

A legend, not history: by charming local tradition the town's name is tied to a British king, Peredurus, who is said to have lost a ring later found inside a pike caught in the beck, “pike” and “ring” giving “Pickering”. A good story, but a story all the same.

The parish church and its medieval wall paintings

The church of St Peter and St Paul crowns the town above the Market Place, its spire visible across Ryedale, and it is the oldest building in Pickering. A late-Saxon church stood here first, its stone font and a carved cross shaft survive. Before it was rebuilt in Norman style around 1140, with aisles, a west tower, and later a widened chancel and chantry chapels added over the centuries.

Its fame rests on an exceptionally complete set of late-medieval wall paintings covering the nave walls, commissioned around 1450 and now re-dated to about 1470 on the evidence of the armour in the Becket scene. Painted when most people could not read, they were a “poor man's Bible”, vivid cycles including St George and the dragon, a giant St Christopher wading a fish-filled river, the martyrdoms of St Edmund and Thomas Becket, the life of St Catherine of Alexandria, the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy, and the Passion, Resurrection and a dramatic Descent into Hell.

Their survival is a story in itself: whitewashed over at the Reformation and forgotten, they were revealed by a fall of plaster in 1852, then controversially whitewashed again by the vicar before being painstakingly restored over ten years in the 1880s–90s. The church is Grade I listed, open daily and free to visit (donations welcome), and dogs are allowed. Look out too for the monument to Robert and Nicholas King of Pickering, who helped survey Washington DC.

Beck Isle Museum

Across the beck from the Market Place, Beck Isle Museum fills a fine Georgian building, once home to England's very first agricultural college. With more than two dozen galleries: recreated period shops including a barber, chemist, cobbler, blacksmith and printer, displays of household and farming life, and a remarkable collection of early local photography spanning around two centuries. It is hands-on and family-friendly; check current opening on the museum's own website.

The coming of the railway

Pickering's Victorian chapter is written in iron. The Whitby and Pickering Railway, engineered by George Stephenson and opened in 1836, was horse-drawn at first and built to open up trade and travel to the coast. That line is the ancestor of today's North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and you can still ride the route. See our guide to the steam train from Pickering to Whitby.

Heritage you can still see

The castle, the church and its paintings, Beck Isle Museum, the market cross and Smiddy Hill, the 1793 Quaker Meeting House on Castlegate, and the Conservation Area streets themselves all repay a slow wander. For everything in one place see the Pickering town guide, plus things to do, places to eat and shopping in the town. Further afield, see the abbeys and castles of the Moors and the villages and places around the park.