Hedon & Preston

Hedon is a small historic market town in the East Riding of Yorkshire with a compact centre of streets around a market place and St Augustine’s church. The town’s past as a medieval port is still visible: the route of the former Hedon Haven and its brick-lined drainage channels can be traced through streets and yards that slope toward the Humber. Local buildings and the surviving town hall give a sense of continuity, and narrow lanes open onto fields and former quays rather than modern waterfront development.

Nearby Preston is a village set among arable fields and the low-lying saltmarshes that fringe the northern Humber. Straight drainage ditches and old sea banks shape the pattern of lanes and footpaths here, and those paths lead to creeks that fill with tides. Farms, small holdings and a sprinkling of cottages form the settled area between Hedon and the estuary; public footpaths and bridleways link the two places and follow the line of the marshes and the old haven channels.