EVIDENCES RELATING TO EAST HULL. 77 



John Meeke. The report of James Watkinson and Robert 

 Moore reveals a conflict, after which their two colleagues 

 refused to discuss the matter further, and carried the Com- 

 mission away. It is easy to see how the confusion might 

 have arisen. 



The farmstead called Bursiland, worth 6s. 8d. per annum, 

 a mere cottage being worth 4s., was probably named from 

 the bushes or thorns locally called bursels, used for making 

 a dead fence, and the oxgang of land, originally let with it, 

 would bear its name. But the arable fields of Southcoates, 

 laid down to grass, were valued in Nobles, and the identity 

 of the strips of tillage must have been forgotten. When, 

 in 1 7 10, Hugh Mason bought the Sutton Rectory from 

 Brodrepp, the heir of the plaintiffs, he took a conveyance 

 of the tenement called Byrsall Lands, and the oxgang called 

 Byrsill, but perhaps these properties were never identified. 



Gyme Close, one of the lands in dispute, containing 4J 

 acres, took its name from the "Gyme," which was, I think, 

 on the small piece of Summergangs close to the Holderness 

 Road, and near to Mile House, over which piece Southcoates 

 Lane passed. A Gyme was a hole formed in the ground by 

 the giving way of an embankment. There were, near there, 

 a large pond, and a little watercourse called Gyme Sike. The 

 Commission found that Gyme Close abutted north on Sum- 

 mergangs and south on the West Field. The Enclosure 

 Award gives a right of way through the south-east corner of 

 lands allotted to Benjn. Blaydes, called the Gyme, and from 

 thence turning south-west upon the side of the old enclosure 

 into another part of the Gyme, leading from Sudcoates to 

 Hull. It also awarded a thirty foot road on the allotment of 

 Benjn. Blaydes from the Turnpike road near the Gyme Sike 

 on the south-west side of the Gyme, to West Field as far as 

 the village of Sudcoates. This is rather vague, but I think 

 this small piece of Summergangs west of Mile House was 

 called the Gyme. 



The Noble of grass was the result of a valuation made of 

 the new pasturage when the arable fields were laid down, in 

 the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The number of cattle-gates 

 that the open grass lands, apart from Summergangs, would 

 support, was then calculated, and three gates were supposed 

 to be worth an annual rent of 6s. 8d., or a noble. These 

 were then allotted to the freeholders, in proportion to their 

 holdings. This involved fractions, but the beast-gate being 

 divided into four feet, two feet was a gate for a foal or a calf. 

 The fractional parts of a Noble were often expressed rather 



