Church of All Saints, Pocklington

The missionary St Paulinus likely established the first Christian church in Pocklington on his way from Goodmanham to found York Minster. Certainly, the Sotheby Cross, now in the churchyard, has the inscription "Paulinus here preached and celebrated AD627". The building's foundations go back to the Saxon era, and some fragments remain of the Norman church. However, most of the building dates from the late 12th to early 15th centuries. The church clock, dating from 1841, has an unusual mechanism in that it uses only one train to strike the hours and chime the quarter hours. It was restored in 2004. Only one other church clock with a similar mechanism is known, that of St John's Church in…

In the churchyard stands the Sotheby Cross. John Soteby was born in Pocklington in 1390, and the Sotheby Cross was made for him, or in his memory, in the 15th century. It was rediscovered buried in the churchyard in 1835, since when it had stood inside the church. In 2006, it was reinstated in the churchyard, its location determined by reference to a drawing in an architectural journal from the 1880s. Matthias Garn, from Bugthorpe, was the stonemason who created the replica of the cross head out of Tadcaster limestone. The Sothebys can be traced back to Roger of Lincoln, born in 1302. They came to Pocklington in about 1380. One of John's descendants, James Sotheby, was both vicar of…