The Radio One Big Weekend at the end of May 2107 was held in the grounds of the Elizabethan Mansion at Burton Constable, some 8 or so miles to the north-east of the regional city of Hull.
It was a good choice for an event of that scale and national importance in terms of having lots of space and little chance of complaints about the noise as there are no real neighbours to the picturesque and landmark Hall.
On the downside the perceived remoteness of the rural area, narrow roads and somewhat of a pinch point on routes in and out of the venue called for a clever and customised transport scheme by the organisers.
The 50,000 crowd over the two days were taken there by 170 buses and coaches running a shuttle service from Park and Ride facilities and principal interchanges. In the course of some 625 trips what was, in effect, the population of a medium sized town were taken into and out of the music festival proving that the planning and logistics worked.
Many of the tens of thousands of visitors who were seeing Burton Constable for the first time will have remarked about its isolation in the open countryside of East Yorkshire.
The settlement actually peaked in or around the 13th Century when records showed a Manor House, 15 Cottages, 21 persons eligible to farm a measure of land called a bovate, and a windmill.
The place was deserted however by around 1488 with many similar hamlets suffering the same outcome arising from uneconomic conditions, the enclosure of land for sheep farming or as a consequence of the devastation wreaked by the Black Death even after its main outbreak in the century before.
Other bits of land became emparked whereby a Lord of the Manor could seize lands for his own use, as in creating a landscape for his own country house.
In May 2017 Burton Constable comprised the mansion, outbuildings, some Estate Cottages, a caravan and timber lodge park, lake and the usual ancillary functions for a sizeable landed environment.
Things could have been so much different.
In 1945 the esteemed team of Edwin Lutyens and Patrick Abercrombie proposed construction of a completely new satellite town in order to relieve the pressures on the bomb damaged housing stock and infrastructure of Kingston Upon Hull.
Their 1945 Plan selected as a suitable location the sleepy Burton Constable for what would be major town with a population of some 60,000 people, therefore quite close to the numbers bussed in for just one weekend of live music.
The New Town would sprawl within a radius of five and a half miles and swallow up the small villages of Withernwick, West Newton, Ellerby and Marton in its land grab bid.
This type of urban development had been pioneered in the guise of the Garden Village Movement in the inter war era and would go on in the post war and more modern eras to include the likes of Cumbernauld, Skelmersdale and Harlow.
Burton Constable was proposed because of its proximity to the Hull to Hornsea railway line operated at that time by LNER, the low lying geography of the district and the availability of wide open spaces with low levels of anticipated compulsory purchase or demolition and clearance of existing housing and other buildings.
The large population was to be distributed within 8 neighbourhoods of varying density from around 50 persons per acre down to 20 per acre. These would be arranged around a Central Area with good public transport links, wide carriageways and good provision of foot and cycle paths. The town would be relatively self sufficient in shopping and business facilities, banks and offices, hotels, entertainment and recreational amenities, technical schools, colleges and health establishments although, presumably the greater proportion of those of working age would have to commute to Hull and the wider region for employment opportunities.
The Lutyens and Abercrombie Plan of 1945 was held to be worthy of the citizens of Hull following their heroism and stoicism in the wartime bombing that had only ceased months before and the Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee, Alderman Schultz predicted a rise from the ashes, Phoenix-like if the proposals could be brought about following the usual discussion, consultation, amendments and counter proposals that such an important process would demand.
In crude terms the idea of a New Town for Hull went for a Burton or rather, it didn't.
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