Louven Howe

Walk north from Lilla Cross, along the track known as “Whitby Old Road”, and you reach Louven Howe, also called Louvain Cross. The boundary stone here carries a carved Maltese Cross. Beside it, someone has dug a stone-lined pit straight through the Bronze Age round barrow, and its mouth sits some six feet above the moor. It is dry now but Joseph Sewell, in his classic little booklet “Mediæval Roads”, called it a well, and a deep one¹Sewell, Joseph T. “Mediæval Roads — An Account of Some Mediæval Roads Crossing the Moors South and South West of Whitby.” Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. 1923, reprinted 1973.. The heritage records make no mention of it²Historic England. List Entry Number: 1004903. Louven Howe round barrow. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1004903?section=official-list-entry [Accessed 5 October 2026]³NYMNPA HER No:  1606. Louven Howe round barrow..

A well would have been a blessing. Roads from Robin Hood’s Bay, Whitby, Lockton and Hackness all met near this spot, and travellers get thirsty. But water does not run uphill. The mound stands on top of a dip, on a moor edge that slopes eastward, so where would the water have come from? Sewell suggests it was carried in, perhaps from the “goose pond” at Foster Howes. I find that hard to swallow.

The NYMNPA heritage records date the boundary stone with its Maltese Cross to the 19th century⁴NYMNPA HER No:  8730. Parish boundary between the parishes of Sneaton and Fylingdales Moor.. Should a medieval Louvain Cross have once stood here, Agnes, sister of Alan de Percy, may well have raised it. She married Josceline of Louvain. With Alan gone, the direct Percy line would have died out, so Josceline took his wife’s name, and in doing so kept both name and title alive in the district⁵Wikipedia. Joscelin of Louvain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscelin_of_Louvain. [Accessed 5 October 2026].

• 1
  Sewell, Joseph T. “Mediæval Roads — An Account of Some Mediæval Roads Crossing the Moors South and South West of Whitby.” Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. 1923, reprinted 1973. ↩︎
• 2
  Historic England. List Entry Number: 1004903. Louven Howe round barrow. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1004903?section=official-list-entry [Accessed 5 October 2026] ↩︎
• 3
  NYMNPA HER No:  1606. Louven Howe round barrow. ↩︎
• 4
  NYMNPA HER No:  8730. Parish boundary between the parishes of Sneaton and Fylingdales Moor. ↩︎
• 5
  Wikipedia. Joscelin of Louvain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscelin_of_Louvain. [Accessed 5 October 2026] ↩︎