Qualla: Howden

Howden: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1080, William the Conqueror gave Howden away. The recipient was the Bishop of Durham, who promptly conferred the church on the monks of Durham but kept the manor for himself. The arrangement stuck so firmly that the wapentake of Howdenshire remained an exclave of County Durham - an enclave of one diocese surrounded by another - until 1846. The name itself is older still. It comes from the Old English heafoddenu, "head valley," though the country here is so flat you have to squint to find a valley at all. The town has always been an island of consequence in level country: a royal manor, a minster town, a horse-fair capital, an airship factory, and now, improbably, the operational centre of the Press Association.

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howden: Royal Connections

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The town's royal connections stretch back further than the Conquest. King Edgar gave the manor of Howden to his first wife Ethelfleda in 959. In 1191 the future King John spent Christmas at Howden; nine years later, now crowned, he granted the town its annual fair. That fair grew...

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Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howden: The Minster's Town

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Morgan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Howden Minster dominates the town, and not only physically. The story of John of Howden - the thirteenth-century canon who funded the original choir, was buried in it in 1275, and is said to have raised his arms from his open coffin during his own requiem mass to greet the host -...

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Image: Chris Morgan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howden: The Airship Years

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kirby, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the First World War the British Admiralty needed an east-coast airship station to protect shipping from German U-boats. RNAS Howden opened in 1916, just east of the town, with vast airship hangars. After the war the station was sold off, then bought back in 1924 by Vickers...

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Image: Mike Kirby | CC BY-SA 2.0

Howden: What Came After

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Locke, CC BY 2.0. Howden has always rolled its identity over - market town, minster town, horse-fair capital, airship town - and after the Second World War it slipped quietly into a kind of stasis. Two Co-op stores, two banks, the bells of the minster every quarter-hour. Then in 2003 the Press Ass...

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Image: David Locke | CC BY 2.0