Entering Cherry Burton village from the Malton road the visitor can see St. Michael and All Angels Church with its beautiful stained glass windows in the nave from the Victorian studio of Charles Kemp, who also designed windows for Chester and York. The windows are characterised by his trademark bundle of wheat. It is also unusual for a village church to have a clock face on all four sides that are painted.
Cherry Burton enters history through the descriptive talents of the Venerable Bede, who relates that St John of Beverley performed a miracle at a place most historians associate with this location. Around 686 AD a nobleman by the name of Earl Addi called on John to consecrate his new church at North Burton (thought by many to be the current Cherry Burton). John agreed, and when he had finished, the nobleman asked him to lay his hands on a sick servant, who was near death.
The servant miraculously recovered from his illness, and Addi was so grateful that he granted the manor and advowson to the monastery founded by John at Beverley. Why is this important? Well, it is one of the first examples of the parochial system in England, where the church was built and endowed by the local lord of the manor. See here.
Cherry Burton was made a ‘Fairtrade’ village in July 2003. It was the first in East Yorkshire and the second village in the whole country to have this award. Over the past few years members of the local community have been active in promoting the use and sale of fairly traded and locally produced goods in the local shop, school, and pub.