A History of Whitby E-Book

Andrew White

• Herausgeber: Phillimore & Co Ltd
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 446

Beschreibung

Whitby is well known today as a seaside resort and a picturesque place to visit, with its piers, boats, fine sands and, overlooking its tangle of red-roofed houses, the ruins of its Abbey in one of the most splendid settings in Britain for such romantic remains. But few of its many visitors would guess the long history of the town or its significance, from time to time, in national affairs. The only comprehensive history of Whitby, it rapidly sold out and Dr White, its author, of ancient Whitby stock, has now fully revised and updated his book, with some new illustrations and interpretations. This new edition will continue as the definitive work on Whitby.

Leseprobe

‘Girls Skaning Mussels’; a photograph taken in the 1890s near Tate Hill Pier by Frank Sutcliffe. This perennial task had to be performed by the womenfolk, ready for baiting the fishermen’s long lines. The collecting, skaning and baiting of mussels were regular and major preoccupations of fishermen’s families. Supplies of mussels from the nearby scaurs were quickly exhausted by demand and fishermen often had to buy them from Boston or even the West Coast. Hanging from the wall can be seen a wicker ‘skep’ used for carrying the coiled long line with its wicked barbed hooks. The Sutcliffe Gallery

First published in 1993 by Phillimore & Co. Ltd

Second edition 2004

This paperback edition published 2019

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

© Dr Andrew White, 1993, 2004, 2019

The right of Dr Andrew White to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7509-9037-0

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

One

The Town

Two

Harbour and Bridge

Three

Early Monastery

Four

Abbey

Five

Shipping

Six

Fishing

Seven

Lost Industries

Eight

Spa and Seaside

Nine

Whitby, Literary and Cultural

Ten

Folklore and Customs

Notes

Bibliography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece: ‘Girls Skaning Mussels’; a photograph taken in the 1890s

1 The environs of Whitby

2 Nos 159-64 Church Street

3 Doorway, 10 Brunswick Street

4 Pre-Georgian cottages

5 Houses in the Cragg

6 A view of Whitby about 1750

7 Cholmleys’ Banqueting Hall

8 Baths, Library and Museum

9 Tin Ghaut

10 Timber-framed houses

11 ‘The Landslip at Whitby’

12 ‘The Landslip at Whitby’

13 Henrietta Street

14 St Hilda’s Terrace

15 Engraving of Bagdale Terrace

16 Poplar Row

17 Whitby from the sea

18 The Royal Hotel and West Cliff

19 ‘Whitby, from the East Cliff’

20 West Cliff development

21 Royal Crescent from the east

22 ‘Royal Crescent, Whitby’

23 Miller’s Yard

24 Tin Ghaut from harbourside

25 Plans of Whitby parish church

26 Parish church from the north

27 Church from the south-east

28 Norman west tower

29 Parish church from the north

30 Plan of the town and harbour

31 Corner of churchyard

32 The Church Stairs

33 St Hilda’s church

34 Gallery of St Ninian’s church

35 Plan of the Chapel

36 A £5 note of Sanders’ Bank

37 Map of Whitby in about 1860

38 No. 1 Grove Street

39 The East and West Piers

40 Gun battery at West Pier

41 Jonathan Pickernell’s plan

42 One of the roundhouses

43 West Pier and Lighthouse

44 Whitby Pier and Lighthouse

45 Capstan on the West Pier

46 Capstan on West Pier

47 Old stone seat on West Pier

48 A Suffragette meeting

49 Whitby old drawbridge

50 ‘Whitby from the South’

51 The swing bridge of 1835

52 The old swing bridge

53 Freehold building ground

54 Opening the new swing bridge

55 The temporary bridge

56 Plan of excavated remains

57 Anglian bone comb

58 Lead ‘bulla’

59 Bronze openwork comb

60 Caedmon of Whitby

61 View of Whitby Abbey

62 Point where work stopped

63 ‘The ancient Streanshal’

64 Whitby Abbey from the south

65 Whitby Abbey from the west

66 ‘Whitby-Abbey, Yorkshire’

67 Abbey from the north-west

68 Abbey before the collapse

69 The Abbey after the collapse

70 The east end of the Abbey

71 One of the finest houses

72 Lines of S.S. Streonshalh

73 Mysterious engraving

74 Detail from map of 1841

75 Liverpool delft-ware ship-bowl

76 The launch of S.S. Whitehall

77 Diamond of Scarborough

78 Wrecks of brigs Mary and Hope

79 Whitby from the north-west

80 The paddle-steamer Emu

81 Graffito of a brigantine

82 A brigantine carved into a pew

83 A sloop carved into a pew

84 The great lifeboat disaster, 1861

85 The sailing coble, Gratitude

86 Hauling salmon nets

87 Reaper, a fifie built in 1902

88 Fortune’s kipper house

89 A Whitby jet worker

90 Mulgrave Castle

91 Saltwick Bay at low tide

92 Alum-making on the coast

93 Obverse of a Director’s pass

94 Reverse of a Director’s pass

95 A horse-drawn railway coach

96 Weighing Machine House

97 Salt Pan Well Steps

98 Emmanuel Bowen’s map, 1720

99 Shed made of whale jaws!

100 Whitby Railway Station

101 Advertisement for the Spa

102 A paddle-steamer

103 ‘Whitby Jottings’

104 Small circular building

105 Empire Electric Theatre

106 Rowing on the Esk

107 Donkey rides

108 ‘Good-bye to Jolly Whitby’

109 Cartoon by Du Maurier

110 The ‘Marvic’ Private Hotel

111 A favourite viewpoint

112 First ever Whitby Gazette

113 Name carved into parapet

114 A carte-de-visite portrait

115 A carte-de-visite portrait

116 Title-page of Streanshall Abbey

117 ‘Tempest Prognosticator’

118 Bagdale in the 18th century

119 View from the ‘199 Steps’

120 Advertisement of 1895

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All the illustrations are by the author or from the author’s collection with the following exceptions:

Bodleian Library, Oxford, 63; Hull Maritime Museum, 99; The Illustrated London News, 19, 78, 84, 103; Liverpool Museum, 75; Proprietors of Punch, 107, 108, 109; Prof. P. A. Rahtz, 56; Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, Hon. F.R.P.S. copyright The Sutcliffe Gallery, 1 Flowergate, Whitby, N. Yorks. (by agreement with Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society), frontispiece and 77; Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, 36, 39, 40, 41, 72, 74, 76, 89, 93, 94, 95, 116, 117, 118; Whitby Public Library, 53; Redrawn from the 60-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1852, 20, 35.

This book could not have been written without the help and advice of a number of people. My first debt is to those great pioneers of Whitby history, Lionel Charlton, Dr George Young, Richard Weatherill and Canon J. C. Atkinson.

Then there are those friends and relations who have produced sheaves of postcards and press cuttings without which so many small but important facts might have escaped; my late aunt, Miss J.H. Thompson, Mrs V. Ash, and Mr M. Blaylock. My late mother, Mrs Margaret White, read the first draft with a native’s critical eye and also lent me many family papers which add an extra dimension to several issues, while my father and brother offered advice on the shipping section.

At the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society I should like to thank successive librarians for help in locating items in the Kendall Room at Whitby Museum and in particular the courteous and efficient Keeper, Mr W.C. Harrison, and his colleagues the Curator of Maps, Mr H.L. Fleming, and Mr W. Leng for their prompt and helpful responses to my numerous enquiries and requests for copies of material in their care. I am grateful to their successors in 2004 as well, especially the Joint Keepers, Roger L. and J. Graham Pickles, and Christiane Kroebel, Hon. Librarian. In 2018 I offer thanks to their successors as well.

At the Liverpool Museums Myra Brown kindly provided useful reference material, while Steven Tomlinson at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, helped with Stukeley material. Elizabeth Melrose at North Yorkshire County Libraries found me appropriate trade directories, while the superb library of the Society of Antiquaries of London provided access to many obscure and otherwise inaccessible volumes. I have been brought up to date on the latest archaeological discoveries by several people, especially Rachel Newman and Richard Fraser, for which I am very grateful. I owe thanks too for a long and useful correspondence on Whitby pictures with Cliff Thornton. Christine Workman was helpful on Richard Ripley.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Janette, and my three children, Susannah, Annabel and Thomas, for allowing me to work relatively undisturbed and for putting up with my preoccupation and writing in every minute of spare time during the latter half of 1991, and the former while I was revising the text in early 2004. I wish to dedicate this third edition to the memory of our elder daughter Susannah, who loved Whitby.

I offer this as my small homage to a town I have known since earliest infancy. I hope it finds favour with an exacting readership.

1The environs of Whitby, from Jeffrey’s map of Yorkshire, 1775. Although this map does not use contours it is still apparent that steep rocky cliffs, high moors and deeply-cut rivers like the Esk and its tributaries all contributed to the isolation of Whitby. The sea was the only practicable access for many centuries. Among man-made features it is the alum-mines, both coastal and inland, which demand attention.

INTRODUCTION

Whitby lies on the North Yorkshire coast between the Tees and the Humber. Here, in the shadow of the ancient abbey, the river Esk empties into the North Sea between high cliffs.

The Esk is tidal still as far as Ruswarp Dam and at low tide presents a narrow channel between sandbanks but at high tide there is a broad expanse of water which has long offered a safe haven to shipping, one of the very few on this coast. The harbour itself and the mouth of the Esk occupy an ancient geological fault. On the east side the cliff is tall and rocky, with alternating layers of shale, sandstone and clay. On the west side of the harbour the cliff is much lower and very largely a capping of boulder clay over sandstone. This has made it very unstable and a number of attempts have been made in recent years to protect the foot of the cliff from erosion. Both cliffs are being eroded quite rapidly and it is thought that several hundred yards of the cliff top have been lost to the sea since the abbey was first established, with a consequent loss of early remains.

Eastwards the cliffs are cut back in a series of notches, fronted by the Scaur, an area of shale and rocks. Saltwick Nab, which closes the view to the east, is a low promontory whose appearance owes much to the activities of the alum-workers, and traces of a small harbour contrived out of blocks of stone still survive on the shore to the east of the Nab. Westwards start the Sands, one of Whitby’s most popular features. The cliff is not vertical here; much of it has been cut back to an angle of rest. There are several rocky outcrops such as First and Second Nab, while further to the west are groups of rocks projecting down to low tide level, known as Lector Rocks. The Sands stretch on westwards to Upgang, Newholm Beck, and Sandsend, where the Eastrow and Thordisa Becks enter, and end with the great rocky headlands of Sandsend Ness and Kettleness.

On the east cliff a royal monastery was established in the mid-seventh century, ruled over for many years by the Abbess Hilda, herself a princess of the Northumbrian royal house. This monastery, called Streanaeshalch, was exceedingly powerful and its influence must have spread far beyond the little fishing town that grew up at its feet. Destruction in the ninth or tenth century by Viking raiders, however, left the site in ruins until the visit of a monk of Evesham, called Reinfrid, in the early years after the Norman Conquest. The monastery was refounded and became once more important not only as a religious centre but also as an economic power, owning a fishing-fleet and widespread properties.

After the Dissolution of the monasteries the abbey was pillaged for its stone and the gaunt ruins suffered the winds and storms of a wild coastal position. Today the ruins are consolidated and in the care of English Heritage and form a dramatic backdrop to the town.

Immediately below the abbey, on the edge of the cliff, lies the parish church. Its Norman origins are immediately visible from the outside but nothing can prepare one for the feast within. The whole of the interior is crammed with seats, box-pews lined with red or green baize, and galleries everywhere. The church served a huge parish with numerous small rural townships, each of which had its own pews. Carpenters in the 17th and 18th centuries fitted it out in a purely domestic style, plain and infinitely appealing, with tall clear glazed windows and staircases running hither and thither up to the galleries. It is like no other church and what a miracle it is that no Victorian restorer chose to destroy its unique atmosphere!

Down below on the harbourside we must mentally peel away the accretions of centuries to visualise the original appearance. On the east side there is a large area of sand known as Collier Hope. Further up, where the bridge now crosses, was probably a natural narrowing of the river. Above it the harbour opened out, with two great sandbanks called High and Low Bell. On the west entered the Bagdale Beck, once a considerable stream. Where it joined the harbour was a wide opening between sandbanks called the Slike, which is now marked on a smaller scale by the dock at Dock End.

On the other side of the river, and further up, was the mouth of the Spital Beck, named from the hospital which stood here in the Middle Ages. Both of these becks continue to run, although the Spital Beck is constricted in its course and the Bagdale Beck is culverted and runs unseen below Bagdale and into the dock. Further up still is the bend in the river known as Larpool, beloved of many artists who chose to frame their views of the town from here.

Considerable changes have occurred to this original appearance. At the harbour mouth a succession of piers has been built since the 16th century in order to encourage the Esk to scour a deep channel and to hold back storm surges and gales from the north. In the harbour area itself the sands by the riverside have been colonised by building out on piles, creating a number of new streets and reducing the width of the harbour. From time to time evidence comes to light of these piles and the former marine character of the areas on which they stand. At Larpool the river begins to be affected by the railway viaduct and the diversions created when the Whitby & Pickering Railway arrived here in the 1830s. Ruswarp Dam forms an artificial limit to the tidal range of the river and originally served to create a head of water for the mill here.

Whitby’s natural harbour gave it early importance as a port for fishing boats and as a place of refuge. By the early years of the 18th century vast numbers of coal-carrying vessels were passing each day on their passage between the Tyne or Wear and the Thames. When storms threatened, Whitby was one of the few safe places on this generally rocky and inhospitable coast. From 1702 a toll on passing ships paid for harbour improvements and these in turn gave rise to an important shipbuilding trade. Whitby’s lack of a hinterland and poor access by road made sure that it could never develop as a manufacturing town and while ship ownership was a significant economic activity in the town very little in the way of locally made goods was ever carried in those ships. Prosperity during the late 17th and 18th centuries has left Whitby with a very distinctive legacy of buildings and, indeed, much of its atmosphere.

Despite some features of its geographical position and because of others, Whitby developed a very large share of the nation’s ship-owning, especially among transports for the navy and colliers, and a proud name for shipbuilding. Moreover the associated port trades and the inshore fishing industry, together with the very large number of deep-sea mariners, meant that Whitby’s prosperity hinged to a very marked degree on things maritime.

In the 1830s a railway was constructed to overcome some of Whitby’s difficulties in communicating inland. This was not like any other railway but one which was until 1847 entirely worked by horses, with an inclined plane at Beckhole to carry it up to the higher levels of the moors above Goathland. Indeed, it was these wild moors which cut Whitby off from inland towns and determined its history.

The railway brought with it a new commodity – visitors – especially after the line was altered for steam traction and was joined to the growing national network. Up on the West Cliff, hitherto a series of grassy fields, a complex of smart new terraces and a crescent began to take shape, under the influence of the railway baron George Hudson. These new houses were specifically designed to accommodate visitors, generally of the more well to do sort, since Whitby was becoming a resort for the middle classes who were attracted by the beautiful scenery, the atmosphere, the comings and goings in the harbour and the fossil hunting, newly fashionable. Royal Crescent was never completed and the grandiose schemes left unfinished by George Hudson’s financial collapse, but the visitors kept on coming.

Another accident of fortune which brought vast employment and some prosperity to Whitby in the mid-Victorian period was the fashion for Whitby jet as jewellery, encouraged by the queen’s penchant for mourning. At a time when a number of traditional trades were feeling the pinch, scores of small jet-workshops were set up in yards and behind houses all over Whitby.

The 20th century has seen the decline of several of Whitby’s staple industries. Shipbuilding has gone. The port trade, while still significant, is only a shadow of its former self. Like most seaside resorts Whitby has seen a considerable change in its visitors, with the competition of cheap continental resorts and package holidays. Now many of the town’s visitors appear at the weekend or come only for the day. Nonetheless, the town can still become uncomfortably full in summer. Its atmosphere still provides the greatest draw and amusements are on a relatively small scale and contained within one area. Most people come for the beach, to wander through the narrow streets of the east side, to watch the harbour activities, to sample the local cuisine, or to visit the abbey and the splendid and eccentric parish church.

Many people, however, know Whitby only in summer. In winter it presents a very different appearance, the streets bare and windswept, many shops closed and holiday cottages empty. Employment is in short supply and alternatives to tourism few. This is part of the price it pays for its location and is the inevitable consequence of houses and cottages rising beyond the means of local people, leading to out-of-season depopulation. Despite all this Whitby has managed against all the odds to avoid the worst effects of decline which beset so many seaside resorts. It still has a life of its own and retains many old established families on both sides of the river. Events such as the Regatta, which takes place each August, appear on the surface to be intended as visitor attractions, but the rowing races offer us a roll call of fine old Whitby names and many of the events bring out local people of all ages to watch.

I have taken the opportunity in the second and third editions to update a number of areas where changes have occurred or new evidence has come to light. This is particularly significant in cases such as the Anglian monastery, where recent excavations have radically altered the picture, but a host of small advances have also been made in other fields; it is quite a surprise to me to find how much needed rewriting after only 11 years and again after another 14.

One

THE TOWN

Whitby is a very distinctive town. Its shape and layout are determined by the river Esk, which runs out into the North Sea between high rocky cliffs. On the cliff-top to the east lies the unmistakable shape of the Abbey ruins and of the parish church, while that to the west is crowned by Victorian hotels and boarding houses. Down below, red-roofed houses cling to the relatively small areas of level ground on both sides of the river and creep up the lower slopes wherever the cliffs make it possible. At a narrowing in the river a swing bridge links the two halves of the town, while further upriver a modern high-level bridge strides across the river just below the woods of Larpool. To seaward project two stone piers with concrete and timber extensions, while other, shorter piers control the swell within the harbour. Everything is very compact. Yet Whitby has a longer and richer history than most larger towns. The emphasis has changed over the centuries: site of a royal monastery in the Anglian period, then medieval abbey, a herring port and shipbuilding town, the base for colliers, military transports, Greenland whalers and manufacturers of alum, the home of jet workshops, a seaside resort … the list goes on. Whitby has kept reinventing itself.

The town seems to have grown organically, with very little planning until the Georgian period, and rather more, but only in distinct areas such as the West Cliff, during the Victorian era. It suffers much the same isolation today as it has always done. In fact it is probably more cut off by sea than at any time before, and the railway link is slower and offers less choice than in the 19th century. However, the success of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and its extension to Whitby itself have been of great benefit to the town in recent years. Even the road, by which most visitors arrive today, negotiates twenty miles of moorland from Scarborough, Pickering or Guisborough, and the weather can be highly unpredictable, with deep snow in winter and thick sea mists that can roll in very rapidly at almost any time.

Although we know quite a lot about the Anglian monastery, and everything points to a settlement of sorts, perhaps village rather than town, below the cliff, it is not until after the Norman Conquest that we start to find any physical records of what was to become the town of Whitby. The Anglian monastery and the medieval Abbey are so important that I have given them a chapter each (Chapters 3 and 4), which removes them from the chronological account contained in this chapter.

DOMESDAY

Other than the information which we have on the Anglian monastery, our earliest evidence of the countryside around Whitby is given by the record called Domesday, compiled under the orders of William I in 1086. Domesday’s purpose was to be a record of the extent and value of the new territories which had fallen to the king as a result of his conquest of England. The basis on which it was created and the detail in which land is recorded vary from area to area.

Since the purposes for which Domesday was compiled differ from those for which historians wish to use it, the information is often tantalisingly brief or vague. However, reading between the lines as well as on them we can see that the area round Whitby had before 1066 belonged to Earl Siward and had then been valued at £112. This amount is fairly meaningless and any attempt to translate it into modern values tends to ignore a host of relevant factors.

What is significant is that by 1086 this value had sunk to a mere 60 shillings, or little more than one-fortieth of its previous value. A laconic entry reads ‘almost all waste’ and further that while in the group of subordinate townships there is capacity for 24 ploughs only six are in fact working, two belonging to the lord, one to eight freemen and three to 30 villagers. Whitby itself could support 15 ploughs but only three are at work. Such decay of agricultural land can only be due to the state of unrest that had been endemic in the region for the past few years and in particular to the savage punitive measures which William had meted out following the massacre of his York garrison in 1070, the so-called ‘harrying of the north’.

By 1086 the land of Whitby and Sneaton, technically a ‘berewick’, 15 carucates or ploughlands in total, was in the ownership of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, but the actual tenant was William de Percy, who was to be a generous benefactor to the abbey. There were 10 villagers and three smallholders. No sign here of the town which was to develop; many minor Domesday settlements listed as belonging to the manor as ‘sokeland’ are ones which we would now regard as integral parts of Whitby. The list enumerates Fyling and North Fyling with one and five carucates – or ‘ploughlands’ – respectively, Gnipe [Hawsker] with three, Prestby with two, Ugglebarnby with three, Sowerby with four, Breck with one, Baldeby with one, ‘Flore’ with two, Stakesby with two and six bovates, and Newholm with four. Many of these names can still be recognised in their modern forms. Within the boundaries of modern Whitby are Prestby, the site of the former abbey, Sowerby, between Mayfield Road and Ruswarp, according to Kendall, Breck, which is lost, and Baldeby, which is probably in the Mayfield Road area (Wood’s Map of 1828 shows ‘Baldaby Lane’ for the modern Mayfield Road). ‘Flore’ is placed by most authorities in the upper Flowergate area (Flowergate probably means ‘the road to Flore’), and Stakesby is still with us.

The similarity of names and indeed their survival over the last nine centuries, remarkable as it is, should not blind us to the fact that the Whitby of those days was a very different place. On the cliff-top stood the extensive ruins of the former monastery, now in process of recolonisation by the monk Reinfrid and his companions, though the area was still lawless and the monks were forced to retreat to their cell at Hackness at about this time.

Below the cliff was the tiny harbour of Whitby, probably even then lying on both sides of the river. The houses were of timber and thatch and, even allowing for large families and a high level of omission, we must envisage a tiny community, and one that has suffered greatly in the recent years of strife and bloodshed as Angles, Danes and Normans fought for power. A small fishing fleet would sail in search of herring or dry its nets on the beaches.

Further afield there were separate hamlets in what is now Flowergate, Stakesby and out towards Ruswarp, where there was a water-mill. A long narrow strip of coastline also belonged to the manor, stretching eastwards to Hawsker and Peak and westwards to Kettleness, but little of it was cultivated. The moors behind were bare and used for little but grazing. Here were few villages but instead farmsteads of Viking Age origin occupied the tops of the dales in ones or twos, scraping a precarious living from the land.

THE BOROUGH

Whitby was not a self-governing borough until the early 19th century. In the Middle Ages the abbots of Whitby were unwilling to allow their tenants even a measure of independence and Whitby’s adventure with borough status was short-lived.

In many towns and villages in the Middle Ages the landowners decided to exchange their relationship of respectively power and service with their tenants for a cash relationship. The former tenants effectively would buy out the landlord’s right to services and to tolls and would pay instead a fixed rent, which they collected themselves. In this way a corporate body would be created, to look after the interests of the community, or at least of the small number who had the necessary qualifications of property or a trade. The community was able to diversify its interests and could become collectively prosperous on the proceeds of trade, tolls or markets.

This process generally involved a charter, important enough to be guarded at all costs by its holders against legal attack by the landlord’s descendants or by the crown. Its effect on town-planning was that a new borough would often develop a distinct market place and more particularly a series of standardised long narrow plots for building houses or outbuildings upon, which are usually called ‘burgage plots’.

Such plots are not exclusive to chartered boroughs and seem to have developed independently in many places in the Middle Ages, perhaps because they satisfied the needs of the age. The name burgage came to mean a plot of land, and not necessarily the tenure by which it was held. This is important when we look at some of the early evidence for Whitby.

In about 1128 a charter of Henry I granted to the abbey such a burgage in Whitby. This does not imply that the town at that date was a free borough. The story of this is more complex.

Between 1177 and 1189 – the exact date is unknown – Richard, abbot of Whitby, granted the rights of free burgage to the inhabitants of Whitby. Presumably this was either of his own free will or at the instigation of the townspeople, and in either case in return for some cash benefit. However, this state of affairs was not long allowed to continue and in 1201 a charter of King John was obtained disallowing Abbot Richard’s charter on the grounds that it was inconsistent with the dignity of the abbey. The matter went again to arbitration soon afterwards but with the same result and the conclusion that the abbot had not had any power to grant it.

So ended the short-lived borough of Whitby. Thenceforth until the political reforms of the 1830s the town was a chattel of the abbey and of succeeding lay landlords, as long as they chose to enjoy it. It seems likely that Abbot Richard’s successor thought better of his arrangements and escaped from them via a legal loophole. Despite this a number of the more respectable townspeople continued to be called burgesses and several plots in the town were known as burgages. One result of Whitby’s humble beginnings and later urban growth has been the fact that much of modern Whitby is not in Whitby at all, but in Ruswarp, Hawsker or Stainsacre townships, into which it has overflowed. This can cause unexpected problems in using the census and other official documents.

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION

Medieval Whitby was represented in parliament by its abbots, or rather they represented their own interests there. The townsfolk had seen their town receive borough status and lose it again within a few years, and with that went their voting rights. Whitby was again represented in parliament during the Commonwealth, but at the Restoration the privilege was again lost.

It was not until 1832 that Whitby was given a chance to send an M.P. to Parliament; even then the town was not at first listed among the new boroughs created by the Reform Act, but the efforts of Richard Moorsom to have it included were eventually crowned with success. It is somewhat ironic, then, that he was not chosen as the first M.P. for the new borough, being too liberal for the electorate, which consisted of only some four hundred people. This honour went instead to Aaron Chapman, a Conservative. In celebration a huge outdoor feast was held for 2,000 people in a field at Bagdale. One hundred and seventy-six plum puddings each of 10 pounds in weight, together with 40 gallons of sauce, were brought to the field in a wagon from the Angel Inn. In addition 5,000 pounds of meat, over 4,000 loaves, and 1,700 gallons of ale were provided. If all of this was eaten it must have provided indigestion and hangovers for days to come. Recently a naïve painting of this so-called ‘Pink Dinner’ – pink was then the Conservative colour – has been given to the Museum by members of the Chapman family.

In 1847 Chapman was succeeded by Robert Stephenson, son of George, both of them being key figures in the development of the railway system. When he died in 1859 a Liberal, H.S. Thompson, chairman of the North East Railway Company, got in by a small majority, largely as a result of a split in Conservative ranks when George Hudson was taken out of the running at the insistence of his creditors. Since then the seat, with a largely rural community as its electorate, generally returned a Conservative candidate, until the landslide of 1997 unexpectedly produced a Labour member, Lawrie Quinn. Normality returned in 2005 with the election of Robert Goodwill for the Conservatives, and he retained his seat in the three subsequent elections of 2010, 2015 and 2017.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE STREET PATTERN

The pattern of streets developed early and our evidence for their early history is heavily dependant upon the abbey cartulary. Many years ago, Hugh Kendall established the date of first mention of most of these central streets, but we should beware of assuming that this can be equated with the date that they came into existence. In most cases the streets are likely to antedate their first documentary mention by many years.

Starting on the east side Henrietta Street appears quite late; it is an 18th-century addition to the town, named after the second wife of Nathaniel Cholmley. Before this it was an undeveloped ledge of the cliff, known as ‘the Haggerlythe’ as far back as 1270. The far northern end of this ledge still retains its original name. It lies along an area of unstable undercliff, with dire geological consequences on several occasions.

2Nos 159-64 Church Street, south of the former Friends’ Meeting House, show clear evidence of their 17th-century timber-framed origin with a jettied upper storey and stucco facades.

At the foot of the Church Stairs Henrietta Street joins Church Street, the name for the whole length nowadays as far south as Spital Bridge. Originally it was Kirkgate, but only so far as the Market Place where it became High Gate. Where it joined Bridge Street it became Crossgate, then from the end of Grape Lane was Southgate, impassable at high tide beyond Boulby Bank. It changes considerably in elevation, from some 40 ft. (12m.) above OD at the Duke of York Inn to 24 ft. (7m.) north of Grape Lane and down to 14 ft. (4m.) south of that point. An alternative road from Spital Bridge to the town at high tide can be traced in Weselden Bank, which rises up behind the old gas works, and runs parallel to the site of the ancient ropery on the cliff-top.

Geological investigations have shown that the existence of Church Street is quite fortuitous. It is founded on a bank of sand at the bend of the river which was protected from erosion by a cliff fall in antiquity, covering the cliffward side some two metres deep in rocky debris and tailing off towards the harbourside. This gave Church Street a small but significant elevation above floods and a slightly firmer footing than it might otherwise have had. This event is undated but we might hazard a guess that it was before the 10th century; in other words before any substantial human settlement took place.

3The doorway of 10 Brunswick Street, a typical 18th-century brick-built house in Flemish Bond (alternate headers and stretchers in every course). The ‘honeysuckle’ fanlight is especially fine and to accommodate it the entablature is broken. Such a design could be found in many mid-18th-century pattern books.

Bridge Street, once Wayneman Street (named after a family who kept an inn here), is unlikely to be older than the bridge it serves; as we shall see, that may still place it quite early in the medieval period. On either side of it are streets which give every appearance of being built out on harbourside sandbanks. Sandgate runs in a curve northwards, as far as the Market Place, dating back to 1640, with its 18th-century town hall, while Grape Lane follows a matching curve to the south, rejoining Church Street beyond the former Friends’ Meeting House. These were at one time known as ‘the Low Streets’. Both of them present a solid wall of buildings to the harbourside, originally punctuated by ‘ghauts’ giving access to shipping. If the properties in these streets were to be excavated it is likely we should find a complex pattern of development and gradual consolidation of the sands by means of piles and progressive timber staiths, such as those found on the ancient waterfronts at Chapel Lane Staith in Hull and at Blands Cliff, Scarborough.

On the other side of the river the street pattern has changed considerably over the last few years. At the west end of the bridge was once the Old Market Place, where Baxtergate, Golden Lion Bank and St Ann’s Staith all met. The buildings on the harbour side of St Ann’s Staith survived well into the 19th century while matching buildings on the other corner where New Quay Road now meets the bridge (known as ‘Boots Corner’) were only demolished in 1974. All of these at one time made the bridge end much more enclosed and it was this rectangle which formed the Old Market Place. Golden Lion Bank is named after the public house of that name and leads to Flowergate, which is one of the oldest streets, named as the road leading to ‘Flore’, a place mentioned in Domesday. Flore itself was perhaps in the vicinity of Flowergate Cross and no doubt the road to it had at one time a semi-rural aspect. North of Flowergate is an area developed in the 18th century, which we shall come across later.

To the south is Brunswick Street, once called Scate Lane, which gives access to the south end of Baxtergate. Another link, a little further to the west, is formed by Union Steps joining Bagdale to the upper end of Flowergate and the former Union Mill. Like the Donkey Road which runs parallel to the Church Stairs, Union Steps is a combination of a steep setted road for horses and a flight of steps for their drivers.

Baxtergate is another ancient street, containing, in Angel Yard, the main coaching inn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Many yards link it to New Quay Road and Dock End, though formerly there was no road on this side and the yards gave access to staiths on the harbour. Baxtergate gives way to Bagdale; the Bagdale Beck is now culverted but the road follows its little valley and the raised footpath on the north side still represents a panniermen’s track. At the back of Broomfield Terrace is a small building with a conical roof, all that is left of the once popular Broomfield Spa, where Victorian ladies and gentlemen came to take the waters. On the other side of the street is the Friends’ Burial Ground, a plot of land bought by the Friends from Nicholas Sneton, a shoemaker, in 1659. In this plain and unassuming area of turf with a mere scatter of gravestones, reached via an anonymous gate, many of the former merchants and leading townspeople of 18th century Whitby lie buried.

4Pre-Georgian cottages in Brunswick Street, bearing a date of 1690. There is no single dominant building tradition in Whitby, timber, brick and stone all being used equally until the 19th century.

Turning the other way now from the bridge we see first St Ann’s Staith and then Haggersgate, which runs around behind the buildings of Marine Parade (Haggersgate is the older street). Pier Lane dives steeply down from Cliff Street to join Haggersgate at its end. North of this is Pier Road, now the main area for amusements, with the Fish Quay on its east side by the harbour. All this area is reclaimed from the harbour and dates from the early years of the 19th century. Before that the quay ceased at Tyreman’s Coffee House and the harbour at that time backed directly on to the houses in the Cragg. The Cragg itself, once a rookery of yards and cottages, was turned around at this time, so that the former backs of houses now faced on to Pier Road. The Cragg lies considerably above the level of the Fish Quay and has to be approached by steps.

The road ran originally only to the West Pier or the sands, below the cliff, but in the mid-19th century a new road, the Khyber Pass, was cut, linking the harbour to the new buildings of the West Cliff.

BUILDINGS OF THE OLD TOWN

If there is any single building type which predominates in Whitby it is the modest Georgian cottage or terrace house of brick with gauged brick relieving arches over the windows but, with the exception of the West Cliff and Fishburn Park, the older parts of the town are a delightful mixture of all periods and styles. This is due to continuous rebuilding and refacing of property on the same sites.

Excluding for the moment the abbey and the parish church, there are no surviving medieval buildings in the town, though there may be re-used timbers from earlier buildings incorporated in those of later date. Indeed there is little earlier than the late 16th or early 17th centuries. The Olde Smugglers in Baxtergate, formerly the Old Ship Launch inn, claims a very precise date of 1401, but on no obvious evidence. White Cottages, near the top of Salt Pan Well Steps, similarly claim to date from 1595, though they appear to be at least a century later. What may be part of a mid-15th-century merchant’s house was found at 159 Church Street in 1993, so Whitby may have further surprises up her sleeve.

In the town itself the oldest surviving houses, of 16th-century date, seem to be 9-10 Sandgate and the rear part of the Marine Café, backing on to Haggersgate. Both of these are timber-framed behind cladding and modest in scale. Recently, medieval timbers have been exposed in a shop near the former Friends’ Meeting House. Abbey House also contains 16th-century work, and re-used medieval details which have led to claims that it substantially represents the Abbot’s House. It is more likely that we owe it to early Cholmleys who robbed the ruins for what material was to their taste. Bagdale Old Hall also has 16th-century origins but was so heavily restored in the late 19th century after sinking to the level of tenements that it has little to show of the original home of the Conyers family.

5Houses in the Cragg, once a rookery of intricate yards and home to many of the fishermen. It is now dominated by holiday cottages. The Cragg is raised several feet above the roadway of Pier Road while its western side abuts the cliff, scarred with the marks of many former buildings, such as those of Barry’s Square.

6A view of Whitby from Coffee House End in about 1750, from a reprint by King in the Whitby Repository of 1867. A painting of this same view is in Whitby Museum. Tyreman’s Coffee House stood roughly where the Marine Café now stands. In the background is a small jetty marking the end of Haggersgate, beyond which there was no direct access to the river front. Rows of privies attached to the backs of these houses discharged straight into the harbour!

7The north front of the Cholmleys’ great Banqueting Hall at the Abbey House, built between 1676 and 1682. It had a short life, being severely damaged in a gale in the late 18th century. The Cholmleys had by now moved to Howsham in the East Riding and so never bothered to repair the hall. The building has recently been restored as part of the adaptation to form a visitor centre.

8The Baths, Library and Museum building as it was, brand new in 1827. It can still be recognised today but has had oriel windows added to the upper corners.

On the corner of the Market Place and Church Street is a group of shops constructed on the site of the pre-Reformation chapel and possibly re-using some of its materials. These date from the 17th century and of similar date is a row of jettied houses (nos. 159-64 Church Street) between the end of Grape Lane and the Friends’ Meeting House. A stone doorway possibly relating to the chapel was found in the former Dyson’s shop to the south of the Market Place in 1994.

Dates start to appear on houses late in the 17th century and although they cannot always be taken at their face value they do give some useful indications. In Rose and Crown Yard, off Flowergate, for instance, is a datestone to Thomas and Elizabeth Walker, 1703. On the house in Grape Lane where James Cook stayed when he was apprenticed to John Walker are the initials of Moses and Susannah Dring, dated 1688, while a house at the foot of the Church Stairs has a stone on its façade, now very worn, inscribed ‘Leonard and Isable Hart Hous Built in the Year of our Lord 1705’. In Brunswick Street is a range of stone-built cottages bearing a date of 1690.

We will examine in more detail the Georgian developments because they were the first elements of urban planning in Whitby. However, there are one or two individual buildings which call for attention here. In the Market Place is the town hall, built in 1788 in the classical style by Jonathan Pickernell, Harbour Engineer and builder of the West Pier, for Mr Nathaniel Cholmley as lord of the manor. It is a very simple but effective building, with a single large room on the first floor, carried on Tuscan tetrastyle colonnades surrounding a central drum containing a spiral stair. A cupola on the roof carries the clock and bell. Another prominent public building which now no longer serves its original purpose is the former baths, museum and library building, completed in 1827. We will look at its function later. It stands in Pier Road and is a plain but well-proportioned structure of three storeys and seven bays – the oriel at either end is a later addition.

The Whitby Commercial Newsroom, built in 1813, is a charming little building on Marine Parade and now the home of ‘The Dracula Experience’. Graham Leach has entertainingly disentangled the Articles of Agreement for its construction to reveal how it was built and what it looked like when new.

GEORGIAN GROWTH

During the relative prosperity of the 18th century Whitby hardly grew at all in extent, though its population grew markedly. A considerable amount of rebuilding took place on existing street frontages and even more infilling took place on back land. Houses there were usually for rental and housed many of the poorer families. We will examine these yards and courts later.

On the main streets we can see many grand houses of the period, occupying older plots. A few examples will suffice. At 23 Baxtergate, a large stone house set back behind iron railings on the south-east side belonged to Mr Coates the shipbuilder. Esk House, a large house near the railway station, lost as a result of bombing in the last war, was the home of another shipbuilder, Thomas Fishburn, and later of Thomas Brodrick. Another shipbuilding family, the Barrys, occupied a house built by Thomas Hutchinson soon after 1763 which was much later demolished to make way for the bus station. On the corner of Flowergate and Skinner Street is a very grand stone house, now unfortunately defaced by later extensions, built for John Addison and later occupied by the Campion family. It was successively Flowergate House, the Crown Hotel, and a working men’s club. Finally, just off Haggersgate is the Missions to Seamen building, a fine brick house built for John Yeoman, a shipowner, in about 1760.

9Tin Ghaut, one of the picturesque areas of Whitby which was demolished in 1959. The Ghaut gave access to the harbour side from the end of Grape Lane and was typical of many such passages now gone which gave the harbour some of its essential character. ‘Ghaut’ is a specifically Whitby word for a narrow passage but it may be related to the dialect word ‘gowt’ sometimes used for a narrow watercourse.

Outside the town area were a number of gentlemen’s houses such as Airy Hill, built in 1790 for Richard Moorsom, Field House, just off what is now Upgang Lane, High and Low Stakesby, and Meadowfield, belonging to the Simpsons. Most of these have since been swallowed up in the suburban growth of Whitby. The gentry houses of most influence on Whitby were the Abbey House, home of the Cholmley family from the 17th century, and Mulgrave Castle, seat of successive Lords Mulgrave. The Cholmleys were old-established, living initially in the Abbey gatehouse, but spent much time away from Whitby, abandoning it altogether for their new principal seat at Howsham in 1743, although as lords of the manor they retained considerable interests in the town. A painting of the Steward’s Room at the Abbey House in 1840 by Mary Ellen Best reveals a house that was essentially mothballed, awaiting occasional use by the family for seaside visits.

Sir William Burrell gives a telling description of both the Abbey House and of Mulgrave Castle in 1758:

At Whitby Mr Cholmondly [Cholmley] has built a large house [Abbey House] close to Whitby Abbey. It is situated upon a high hill which might command a noble and extensive prospect (having the sea in front, on the other side Whitby river adorned with high banks covered with wood, and beyond a great range of cultivated country; at the foot of the hill is Whitby town) had not the stupidity of its owner contrived to shut out the view of the town by stables, dog kennels etc, the sea by high walls. The most pleasant room in the house is very judiciously converted to a kitchen. The abbey is a terrible prospect of the Gothick disposition of its former owner who, when he built the dwelling house, gutted this noble aedifice and it now stands almost subdued by time, the arches and roofing being entirely fallen in and the whole place, once the asylum of religion, is now become an habitation for rabbits …

From Whitby to Mulgrave is 4 miles to Mr Phipps, who has a very pretty hunting seat [Mulgrave Castle] built by the Duke of Buckingham, but has received great improvements from the present owners, Mr Phipps and Lady Lepel. It is situated on the top of a hill about half a mile from the sea. On the back front is a spatious grass walk planted on each side with evergreens and ash trees, from which there is a beautyfull prospect of the sea. In front they look over a tolerable country entirely bare of wood, except a vale belonging to Mr Phipps with the hills on both sides of it, at the top of which is the ruins of [Old] Mulgrave Castle, now a heap of rubbish. At the bottom of the hills runs a small stream quite through the vale, which might be made extremely pretty, as well as the woods, if the absurdity of the country would permit it. But their claim of turning beasts into the woods to browze renders all intentions of the owner to beautify it ineffectual.

In most towns there were moves in the 18th century not merely to rebuild individual houses but to create planned streets, often to certain standards. Whitby was no exception. The first new area to be developed was Henrietta Street, set at the upper end of Church Street and on a ledge in the cliff. Building began here in 1761 and it soon became a fashionable area, which seems odd to those of us who can remember it as a very dingy and poor place. The reason is not far to seek. In 1787 a serious landslip occurred here, destroying a number of new houses. The fine octagonal Methodist Chapel was another casualty. Further landslips have occurred since, most particularly in 1870, and it must have been manifestly clear that the subsoil was unsuitable for building. At all events the fashionable people moved elsewhere, leaving it to poorer families. The cliff above has continued to give trouble, with many small landslips from the churchyard.

10Timber-framed houses of the early 18th century forming the northern side of the Market Place. The nearest building carries a date of 1704 while other buildings on the opposite corner, beyond the Town Hall, are even earlier. This market place was first laid out in 1640 by Sir Hugh Cholmley.

In 1762 building began on Farndale Fields, leading from Flowergate up on to the West Cliff. A new street called Skinner Street developed here, and to the west in what is now Well Close Square other houses sprang up, though in neither area have the 18th-century buildings survived in any number. A fine terrace known as Poplar Row survives just off Skinner Street.

11 & 12‘The Landslip at Whitby’ from The Graphic of 21 January 1871. A large piece of cliff, several graves in the churchyard and a number of houses including Mr Harland’s pipe manufactory, fell away because of the effect of rain and frost on the boulder clay beneath. It was virtually a repeat of the events of nearly a century before.