By the end of the 12th century, a good deal of Kilnwick land lay in the hands of the Gilbertine Priory of Watton, a double religious house (men & women).

[2] Kilnwick House is thought to have been developed on the site of a medieval farm that was under the control of the Gilbertine Canons of nearby Watton Priory.

During the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1539, the Kilnwick estate was granted to Robert Holgate, who later became Archbishop of York, and passed on his death to the Earl of Warwick.

At the time of the sale and break-up of the Kilnwick Estate in 1951, the oldest part of the house was Jacobean, having likely been built in the early years of the 17th century by Richard Thekestone who held the manor in 1599, or Nicholas Stringer, owner from 1614.

Today the magnificence of the structure is partially concealed by an overgrown holly hedge along the C59 road to the south, and by growth of ivy, which mounts the walls.

This is in a state of poor repair, since the construction was dry stone, involving no mortar, and expansion and contraction of the clay subsoil over the years has led to bulges and the loosening of bricks.

A walk northwards along the footpath from the corner of Church Lane and Main Street – what is now part of the Minster Way – takes one through the flood plain of Kilnwick Beck.

Here, on the north side of the beck, the unnaturally uneven ground is testimony to the shallow clay workings that must have been the source of one of the raw materials used by the kiln workers.

This readily available, local source of bricks is a likely explanation for the size and extent of the walled garden and the interesting, but seemingly casual, construction of the dry-brick ha-ha.

The last advance – the Devensian glaciation (circa 60,000 to 20,000 years before present) – was diminutive by comparison with its predecessors, but was responsible for building not only Holderness as it extends today, but a plain of greater west–east extent that has been trimmed in post-glacial times – roughly the last 10,000 years – by cliff erosion as sea level has risen about 90 metres to restore the North Sea.

Because of this, the ice sheet was divided, one arm flowing southward down the Vale of York, the other curling around the Moors and Wolds to deposit Holderness.

The till left by the ice (a mixture of clay with cobbles and boulders and, occasionally, outwash sands and gravels) feathers out westward of Kilnwick.

Given its low-lying position, and its diminutive church tower, Kilnwick is not easy to spot until a visitor is within the ring of woodland that surrounds it, and the density of trees is in stark contrast to the oft-treeless arable land of the Wolds to the north and west and Holderness to the east.

Kilnwick currently has no shop or public house; the nearest are found in Middleton on the Wolds, Hutton Cranswick and Lund, while Lockington still clings to the provision of a post office).