It is an interesting fact that about 1862 the small manual organ in the Independent church was played by a Mr Clark, who was organist at the Parish church in the morning and at the chapel in the afternoon and evening.  Before this time the Independents had contented themselves with violins and a bass viol, and for a time with a clarionette.

In 1801, the population of Pickering was 1994, and at the last census before the accession of Queen Victoria it had increased to 2555.

During the Georgian period Pickering’s only external illumination at night was from that precarious “parish lantern,” the moon.  The drainage of the town was crude and far too obvious, and in all the departments for the supply of daily necessities, the individualistic system of wells, oil-lamps or candles and cesspools continued without interference from any municipal power.

The houses and cottages built at this time are of stone among the hills, and of a mixture of brick and stone in the vale.  Examples of cottages can be seen in the village of Great Habton.  They are dated 1741 and 1784, and are much less picturesque than those of the seventeenth century, though village architecture had not then reached the gaunt ugliness of the early Victorian Age.

The parish registers throughout the district were regularly kept, and as a rule contain nothing of interest beyond the bare records of births, deaths and marriages.  The great proportion of villagers, however, who at this time signed their names with a mark, shows that the art of writing was still a rare thing among the peasantry.  The church account books of the period reveal many curious items such as the frequent repairs of the thatch on the vestry at Middleton (thatched churches are still to be seen in Norfolk and Suffolk), and “L5, 19s. 6d. in all for the Violin or Base Musick” of the same church.

Churchwarden architecture of the deal boards and whitewash order made hideous many of the village churches that required repairs at this time, and if one discovers a ramshackle little porch such as that just removed at Ellerburne, or a big window with decayed wooden mullions cut in a wall, regardless of symmetry, one may be quite safe in attributing it to the early years of the nineteenth century.  One of the staple industries of Pickering and the adjoining villages at this time was weaving, and a great number of the cottages had the room on the opposite side of the passage to the parlour fitted up with a loom.

We have now seen many aspects of the daily life in and near Pickering during the Georgian period.  We know something of sports and amusements of the people, of their religious beliefs, their work, their customs at marriages and deaths, and we also have some idea of the dreadful beings that these country folk trembled at during the hours of darkness.  We have discovered more than one remarkable man who was born and bred in these primitive surroundings, and we have learnt something of one of the trades that helped to make Pickering prosperous.