One Day in December E-Book

David Lewis

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 191

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In 'One Day in December', Scarborough based author D.B. Lewis, working together with local Wilfred Owen historian, Len Friskney, has linked together various aspects of the First World War as they affected this North Yorkshire seaside resort. The book covers 'The Bombardment of Scarborough' in December 1914, the war poetry of Wilfred Owen written during his time in the town, and the effects of the war on the local people. The book contains chapters on the production of community theatre based on these topics which is suitable for use by schools and youth groups together with a chapter on the legacy of Wilfred Owen in the dialogue for peace. Using new material the book is a fascinating look at this era of Scarborough's history and a strong testimony for the cause of international concord.

Leseprobe

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who strive to promote peace in a challenging world, in particular teachers and educators everywhere.

© 2019 D.B. Lewis Bryn Stowe Publications

Front Cover: David Chalmers

Rear Cover additions: Liam Kitto

Chapters 1 & 2 with additional material by Len Friskney

Publisher: tredition GmbH, Halenreie 42, 22359 Hamburg, Germany

ISBN

Paperback

978-3-7497-0835-2

Hardcover

978-3-7497-0836-9

eBook

978-3-7497-0837-6

All rights reserved. Except where selected copyright is held elsewhere, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests for the main text please write to the publisher.

One Day in December

D.B. Lewis

with Len Friskney

Wilfred Owen, The Bombardment and Scarborough in the First World War

Also by D.B. Lewis

A Little Bit of Trouble in London

Plotting Shed (Ed.)

Great Aunts and Armadillos

Return to Premantura

A Wedding in Hvar

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Wilfred Owen in Scarborough

Chapter 2: Life at the Clifton Hotel

Chapter 3: The Owen Map and Trail

Chapter 4: Scarborough and the First World War

Chapter 5: ‘One Day in December’

Chapter 6: Community Theatre: Production Notes

Chapter 7: Owen’s Legacy

Postscript

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all those who have supported this work in whatever way and in particular; Stewart Macdonald and Mark Vesey of the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre; my co-author Len Friskney; David and Angela Chalmers; Liz Baxter and Julie Vinson and all the staff at The Clifton Hotel; David Henderson of the Western Front Association; Adrian Perry of Scarborough Civic Society; the Cuxhaven Naval Museum, Germany; Meg Crane and Sam Gray of the Wilfred Owen Association; Simon Powell of the Britannia Hotel Group; Denise Gilfoyle; the Outreach Department at the Stephen Joseph Theatre; Ali Watts and John Patterson of Beach Hut Theatre Company for their constant theatrical inspiration; Robert Parkinson of Blue Sky Graphics; Mark Haynes, Elsa Monteith and all the performers and staff at Westborough Methodist Church, Scarborough; the late Joyce Bell, artist and poet, together with Jonathan Brown, lecturer at the Worker’s Education Association for inspiring my interest in Owen and the war poets; Rob Webb and Liam Kitto at Bryn Stowe Publications; Debbie Seymour, Andrew Clay, Esther Graham, Jennifer Dunne and Ruth Yoxon of Scarborough Museums Trust; Wayne Murray of the Proposed Scarborough Social History Museum; Callum Nash for the cast and rehearsal photographs; all the staff and students at Scalby School, Scarborough, in particular Liz Stockhill and Paul Offord, who are so welcoming in my visits; all my colleagues in the International Police Association Writer’s Forum, both here and abroad for their continued support and friendship in all things literary; to Rod Jarman, Adrian Rabot and Ed Sherry of the London Policing College and Youth United for providing me with both inspiration and work; to Sue Wilkinson and The Scarborough Evening News (formerly Gazette) for help with publicity and press cuttings; Sylvia Anderson, Mirko Esquivel, Theresa Reichelt and Nadine Otto of the publishers ‘tredition’ for their support and advice; Liz Dyer, North Yorkshire County English Advisor and Regional Coordinator for the National Literacy Trust; all the staff and volunteers at Newby and Scalby Library, in particular Lesley Newton; Mark Marsay of Great Northern Publishing in Scarborough; Doug, Louise, Evie, Will and Hugh Stanway; Mike Bortoft at St Martin’s on the Hill; and Felix Hodcroft, Tony Howson, Mark Thompson, Heather Stoner, Jo Reed Turner, Dorinda Cass (of the Scarborough Writers’ Circle), Wanda Maciusko, Jen Thomas, Sandy Sandevik; and almost finally, to all my other fellow authors and performers in Yorkshire for their constant help in sustaining the various writing and theatrical endeavours we all seem to become involved in. A final thank you to fellow author, Maria Fuller, who as a very professional PA, has promised to sort out my incommodious filing systems, and to my wife, Sonia, for once again supervising the proof reading.

The cover imagery is an artistic photographic creation from the 2014 production of ‘One Day in December’ entitled ‘Futility’ by David Chalmers. I am grateful to him and to Angela Chalmers for the use and reproduction of their art in this work. The cover wording and rear imagery is by Liam Kitto of Bryn Stowe Publications, Scarborough.

R.I.P.

In memory of

Mark Gay

(Musical Director, ‘One Day in December’)

Lillian Roberts

(‘Voice’ in the Westborough production of the play).

and

Joyce Bell

(Artist & poet; the original inspiration for this work).

‘Wilfred Owen in Scarborough’

Digital montage created by Robert Parkinson, 2018, for Bryn Stowe Publications

Preface

‘Why Remember?’

By David Henderson

The Western Front Association

The tumultuous events that occurred during 1914-18 have had a special resonance since the centenary commemorations of the Great War. In so many ways the events of that time have shaped what we are today.

The legacies of the early 20th century such as the broader cataclysm that was the eventual rise of Nazism and the Second World War, or the social and political movements of trade unionism and female emancipation, gained a heightened definition in the crucible of the Great War conflict.

To know what we are today, we should seek to understand why nations were moved to fight and why individuals on all sides rallied to their respective causes. We can understand by remembering Wilfred Owen and what he and countless other combatants saw, felt and suffered. We can remember the many who came back and endured through the difficult post-war years. And we can learn much from those who stayed at home to support the troops, coped with the stresses and strains of bereavement, and suffered countless other privations whilst feeding the furnace of total war.

The loss of the last of the veterans has put the Great War just beyond our reach. But we have been bequeathed a rich canon of literature, imagery and art from the conflict to help us better remember.

When we remember, we can learn and we can understand. And that is the very least we owe such a remarkable generation.

David G Henderson

The Western Front Association

westernfrontassociation.com

The Western Front Association is a Registered Charity No. 298365

The logo of the Wilfred Owen Association

Introduction: The Owen in Scarborough Story

by D. B. Lewis

Thank you for delving into this book; hopefully within these pages you will find ideas, stimulation or a confirmation of your own feelings about the destructive nature of any war or any conflict, big or small. The book has been published to commemorate the message that Wilfred Owen was trying to impart to us through the poetry that had its origins in his time spent in Scarborough in 1917 and 1918.

The message tells us of the need to strive for peaceful ways of settling our global disputes and it is this that formed the justification for this book to add to the many now existing about Owen. It is in an amalgam of several separate strands of this same message that took place throughout the commemorative years of 2014 to 2018 and are now produced in this one volume.

It is hoped that many people will enjoy the book for itself, even if they have no thought of performing the piece of community theatre that appears within the story. The play was originally intended for community performances such as those produced within schools, clubs or uniformed youth organisations as a way of bringing individuals together through one performance project, but it has resonance for the general reader and all those who visit, or care for, the wonderfully enigmatic seaside town of Scarborough.

In April 2014, I wrote and produced ‘One Day in December’ as a community theatre production for that year’s Scarborough Literature Festival, later to become ‘Books by the Beach’. It was a commemoration about the start of the First World War in 1914 and, by the end of the project over 120 people had become involved; 100 people alone being involved in the play itself.

Owen wrote over 80 ‘war poems’, three of which feature in the play and accompanying art installation; ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth,’ ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Futility.’ Together with his many letters which are in their own right a rich insight into the life and times of a war poet and his circle, they show a progression from outright angry indignation at the loss and slaughter of young lives, move through a bitter, almost helpless despair, to end up with what appears to be a softer resignation of what Owen probably saw as his own death only months away. He was killed in action leading his men across the Sambre-Oise Canal at Ors just one week before the war ended. His parents were told of his death on the very day the Armistice was signed. I was inspired by fellow writer and artist, Joyce Bell to write about Owen and Scarborough as well as highlighting the effect war had on the townspeople, then and now. The idea of staging a community theatre production linking these themes arose from that moment.

I was formerly a member of the Metropolitan Police Central Youth Team in London and later a co-ordinator with ‘Youth United’, working with the Prince’s Charities at Dumfries House in Scotland, and it was through these experiences that I discovered the real value of bringing disparate groups of people of all ages together. The community theatre concept came directly from that experience as the groups involved in the production were drawn largely from the ‘Uniformed Youth’ groups of Westborough Methodist Church in Scarborough.

With the production came the first small edition of this book, in the form of an extended programme with interesting insights into the ‘Owen in Scarborough’ and ‘Bombardment’ stories. During the writing of that work, I met and worked with two local people with whom it was a real joy to be associated; Mark Vesey from the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, and Len Friskney, the ‘general factotum’ at The Clifton Hotel, where Wilfred Owen was first billeted on his arrival in Scarborough in 1917. Both of these people readily agreed to contribute to this work and I am very grateful to them both for their dedicated efforts in helping to keep the legacy of Owen and the First World War alive in the area. In 2017, I spent some time with the students and staff at the wonderfully supportive and disciplined Scalby School in Scarborough. There, I witnessed the teaching of Owen and his legacy in the classrooms and well-stocked library and truly felt that the teachers and educators of today were alive to the importance of the messages Owen was trying to impart.

Finally, in 2018, we, the Production Team at Bryn Stowe Publications with its theatre producing arm, ‘TAFAT’, launched the ‘Owen Map and Trail’, a guided tour around the Owen sites with the support of many of the connected Scarborough organisations. This has proved very popular and copies of the map can be obtained, free of charge, at the key places of the trail. This work provides a deeper insight into those sites and acts as a source of ‘background information’ for the play and its settings.

Whether you are planning to produce a piece of community theatre about the First World War, walking the Owen Trail, or visiting any of the fascinating historic sites of Scarborough connected to the story then this book should be a source of help and interest. We all hope you will find a message of hope for the future within its pages.

Central to the memory of Wilfred Owen in Scarborough, nestling just below the North York Moors and hugging the North Sea which forms a part of this story, is Len Friskney of the Clifton Hotel.

Meeting Len for the first time was like stepping back into the history books of a great long- established hotel…modest, hardworking, neat, a gentleman and character from the old school of hotel life, a life which is in danger of slipping away under the seas of plush décor, designer bars and the all too familiar cut of silver-grey, tidy corporate conformity with zero hours contracted holiday staff.

I first went to the Clifton Hotel in search of Wilfred Owen for the short story from which the play in this work was then derived. It is a well-trodden path but, like other things in Scarborough, underrated by many - even by its own inhabitants. The Civic Society blue plaque was fading and there was little to tell me that this was one of the important venues of the Owen story as well as an essential marker on the First World War historic trail. I felt it was particularly important in the story of the futility of war with its need to continually search for an end to the conflict and global catastrophes that Owen gave us so poignantly, and powerfully, over one hundred years ago.

Talking with Len and seeing the hotel, feeling the ambient stillness together with the view from Owen’s ‘Five Windowed Turret Room’, led to the writing of ‘One Day in December’; firstly, as a short story and then as a community stage play. I interviewed Len by his fascinating Owen foyer display in the Clifton Hotel on a number of occasions. He came into the offices of the theatre company I was then running at Woodend, the creative arts centre in The Crescent, Scarborough and there, he recounted the story which he has now graciously agreed to have used in this work.

Fig 2: Part of Len Friskney’s ‘Owen’ Display at The Clifton Hotel

Chapter 1:

Wilfred Owen in Scarborough

by Len Friskney

These two chapters are about Wilfred Owen, the First World War and Owen’s association with Scarborough, in particular with the Clarence Gardens Hotel, now The Clifton Hotel on Queen’s Parade. In the foyer of the hotel is a display dedicated to the poet and soldier which I have put together and maintained over the past few years. Owen was posted to the hotel after he had become a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh after suffering from ‘neurasthenia’ (‘Shell Shock’ or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, as we would now call it). He was stunned after having an accident at Bouchoir in France where he fell down a well.

He resumed duties after that incident, but in April 1917 a shell exploded near him whilst he was asleep. His Commanding Officer recognised the symptoms of shell shock and sent him back to ‘Blighty’. While in the hospital he was examined by a Dr Brock who favoured an ‘Occupation Cure’, and so Owen was encouraged to continue writing and in so doing this helped him to recover as well as helping to develop his own poetic style. Owen had an interest in writing poetry from a young age.

Owen’s thoughts, feelings, emotions and his own experiences of the horrors of war were expressed in his poems as a serving soldier and his phrase ‘My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity’ is well known, appearing as it does on the War Poets’ Memorial in Westminster Abbey.

Fig 3: The War Poets’ Memorial at Westminster Abbey

Scarborough has had its share of famous people over the years who either came to stay for short periods or were born here and these are commemorated in the many blue plaques that can be seen around the town including the one of Wilfred Owen at the Clifton Hotel. Owen was sent to the hotel, ‘The Clarence Gardens’ as it then was, when he was posted to Scarborough after suffering from what would later be called ‘Shell Shock’. This chapter is dedicated to him, not only as a poet whose words have been immortalised, but as a man of great courage and leadership.

Many books have been written about Wilfred Owen and his poems have been frequently published. This short tribute is in no way a complete biography which can be found within those publications. But Owen already knew of Scarborough of course when he came with his family on holiday in 1905 at the age of 12 and his cousin, May Davies, had lived in the town for some years.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Oswestry in 1893; his family eventually moving to Shrewsbury and his interest in poetry started at an early age. When the First World War broke out, he was a most unlikely person to choose a military career but he became a soldier and a respected officer. He expressed the futility of war, the suffering, the horror and the death as well as his experiences of that time through his poems. He became one of the great First World War poets and, in the end was well respected as both a poet and a soldier.

Fig 3a: Wilfred Owen (left) with his family in 1905 at Scarborough’s South Bay.

Owen had enlisted into the Artist’s Rifles in 1915, was commissioned in 1916 and became an officer in the 5th (Reserve) Battalion of the Manchester Regiment with whom he went to France on active service. In 1917, suffering from shell shock, he was sent to the Casualty Clearing Station at Gailly in France from where he was eventually transferred, via Wales, to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Slateford near Edinburgh where he met other poets including Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves who became his inspiration. His own style was developed there and writing poetry became a therapeutic aid in his recovery.

On 28th October 1917, he appeared before the medical board who cleared him to return to his unit and on the 24th November 1917, he reported to the Clarence Gardens Hotel, Scarborough for ‘light duties’. On arrival, and after a night spent in the Victoria Hotel in West Square, he became second in command to Lieutenant-Colonel Mitchell. This involved finding accommodation for fellow officers and organising the domestic staff. In one of the many letters to his mother, Susan, he described his work;

“I have to control the household, which consists of some dozen Batmen, 4 Mess Orderlies, 4 Buglers, the cook (a fat woman of great skill) two female kitcheners, and various charwomen! They need driving. You should see me scooting the buglers around the dining room on their hands and knees with dustpan and brush! You should hear me rate the Charwoman for Lavatory basins unclean.

I am responsible for finding rooms for the newcomers, which is a great worry as we are full up. This means however that I have a good room for myself as well as my office!

I kept two officers under arrest in their rooms………

I get up at 6.30 to see that breakfast is ready in time….

There was a guest night yesterday, which meant a gorgeous meal, whose menu I am ashamed to give you. It kept my house-lads sweating until after midnight!”

Being appointed ‘Major-domo’ - as he called it, he was able to choose his own room. He does not state which room this was by number but my investigations suggest that it was one of the ‘turret rooms’ that mark out the hotel. In his letters, Owen mentions that he was in a room where ‘the ceiling was so low that even a small man would have to stoop’. In the present room 493 a massive ‘T’ girder holds up the roof of the tower or ‘turret’ as we call it, so this suggests it was indeed this room in which he was to stay.

In another letter Owen writes to his mother, Susan, that ‘…I sit in the middle of my five windowed turret and look down upon the sea…’ It is quite possible although this in in part, conjecture, that he may have taken bedroom 367 on the third floor which still has a five windowed ‘turret’ and is right below room 493 as his office for his military duties, and used 493 as his sleeping quarters where he could escape from his duties for ‘peace and solitude’ to concentrate on his poetry.

During alterations to room 493 some years ago, two alcoves on the left and right of the room were blocked off but in the centre of the main wall, the position of the hearth from Owen’s time is still in evidence under the carpet and below the headboard. A fire surround from another room has been placed in this room to give an effect of how it would have been at the time Owen wrote ‘Miners’.

Between 1917 and 1918, over 85 of Owen’s poems and fragments can be attributed to his pen whilst at Craiglockhart, Scarborough and Ripon. Although Owen was only at Scarborough for six months in total and his time at Craiglockhart and Ripon were clearly profound, he either drafted, wrote, or revised about 17 of his most significant poems in Scarborough plus a number of sonnets and other fragments. Following my conversations with Dominic Hibberd during his visit to the Clifton Hotel in 2013, I researched the works and the letters he wrote to both his mother and other poets, and believe these, at least, to be the ones he wrote in Scarborough;

November 1917 - March 1918 (Clarence Gardens Hotel)

‘I Saw his Round Mouth’s Crimson’

‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’

‘Le Christianisme’

‘The Rime of the Youthful Mariner’

‘Who is the God of Canongate’

‘Miners’

‘A Tear Song’

‘A Terre’

‘The Show’ (Drafted)

‘Hospital Barge’

June 1918 (Burniston Barracks)

‘The Calls’

‘Training’

‘The Send Off’ (Revised)

‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’

‘Disabled’ (Revised)

‘Kind Ghosts’

‘Soldier’s Dream’ (Revised)

‘I am the Ghost of Shadwell Stair’ (Drafted Clarence Gardens, revised Burniston Barracks)

‘The Sentry’ (Drafted Craiglockhart, continued Burniston Barracks)

‘Spring Offensive’ (Revised in France)

Some of Owen’s best-known works came from the ‘Turret Room’ including ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’. ‘Hospital Barge’, ‘The Rime of the Youthful Mariner’, ‘A Tear Song’, ‘The Show’, ‘A Terre’ and ‘Miners’. The inspiration for this latter poem may well have come as he gazed into the small coal fire in his room after he had read of the 155 men and boy miners who had died in a pit explosion at Podmore Hall Colliery in Halmerend in January 1918 on the North Staffordshire Coalfield (‘The Minnie Pit Disaster’). It may well have reminded him of the similarly dangerous work the soldiers of the Royal Engineers were undertaking in trying to tunnel under the enemy held positions at ‘The Front’.

Eventually, with other officers in Scarborough he was posted to the Northern Command Depot in Ripon for a short period of battle re-training after being passed fit for front line duties. He then returned to Scarborough and to Burniston Barracks before embarking for France. Little is left now of the barracks save a ‘pill box’ on the edge of the golf course and the names of the housing estate streets built on the old barracks site; ‘Green Howard’s Drive’, ‘Signals Court’, ‘Cavalry Court’, ‘Hussar Court’, and ‘Strensall Drive’ (named after the military camp in York). The estate is on the right-hand side of the A167 travelling north towards Whitby just past the Open-Air Theatre and Waterpark.

This time his accommodation was not so luxurious as when he had been at the hotel; it was a tent outside the main gate of the camp where, between his duties as the Battalion Messing Officer and training new recruits, he managed to write further poems including; ‘Spring Offensive’ (begun at Scarborough), ‘Disabled’ (revised), ‘The Send Off ‘ (revised), and ‘The Kind Ghosts’, amongst other works.

He was delayed going back into the front line due to an outbreak of ‘Spanish Flu’ at the barracks when about 30 officers went down with the infection and where many soldiers were dropping on parade. Owen however remained unaffected. In August 2018 he returned to France and took with him a postcard of Scarborough to ‘remind him of home’. In October 1918 he was in action at Joncourt in France where he was awarded the Military Cross for his actions. The citation reads;

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on 1st/2nd October 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter attack. He personally manipulated a capture of an enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.’

Wilfred Owen was killed in action on the 4th November 1918 in an attack on a heavily defended position at De La Motte Farm near the village of Ors, the main obstacle being the Sambre Canal which had to be crossed. After the battle his body was found on the enemy side of the canal and his grave is in the communal cemetery at Ors in France with many of his comrades. The news of his death was not received by his parents until the 11th November, Armistice Day.

Many years have passed since his death but Wilfred Owen’s reputation has grown and he is now regarded by many as one of the greatest poets of that era who found inspiration in his own war experiences and the town of Scarborough should be proud of that association. Scarborough Civic Society recognised this when the blue commemorative plaque was unveiled near the Turret Rooms at The Clifton Hotel by Peter Owen, Wilfred’s nephew, in 1999. In 2011, The Wilfred Owen Association made me an honorary member – I was very pleased about that.

Fig 4: Owen’s grave at Ors in France (Len Friskney)

Chapter 2:

Life at The Clifton Hotel

by Len Friskney

I came to work at The Clifton Hotel in June 2000; it was owned by English Rose then, before Britannia took it over, and as soon as I started, the hotel’s connection to Wilfred Owen was obvious - people just kept asking about it. I think the importance of Owen, the hotel and the message many of the war poets were trying to convey to the world, then and since, wasn’t really appreciated by the owners. I think it is a bit more now although the hotel does not make any particular fuss about the Owen connection; this is a popular busy hotel throughout the year anyway with stunning views over the North Bay and the Castle. It’s a lovely place to stay with the added interest of the history for those that like it; a sort of added value I suppose and not the main reason people come.

Scarborough must have seemed very ‘Royalist’ during Queen Victoria’s reign especially on the north side with street names such as ‘Queen’s Parade’, ‘Victoria Park’ (and Avenue), ‘Albert Street’, ‘Royal Albert Drive’, ‘Sandringham Street’, ‘Clarence Gardens’ and ‘Alexandra Gardens’. The original Alexandra Hotel, one of The Clifton Hotel’s two predecessors on the present site, was twice as big as the present hotel and covered much of what is now the hotel car park as well as the present hotel site itself. Shortly after the construction was completed and the new Alexandra Hotel was opened to the public on Monday 18th July 1864, the local newspaper, ‘The Scarborough Gazette’, published a complete list of the names of every guest staying in Scarborough Hotels as well as the guest houses and public houses with accommodation.

In this way it is recorded that the Alexandra Hotel had over 250 guests in the August of 1864. However, it has always seemed to me that these figures might just have been a way of enhanced advertising by the hotel itself and they may have been ‘gilding the lily’ as they were possibly struggling to fill their rooms at the time.

When the present Clifton Hotel was taken over from ‘English Rose’ by ‘Britannia’, extensive alterations took place where an overflow dining room and the ‘Alexandra Suite’ were converted into bedrooms. There, a piece of history was revealed when a workman found, under the floorboards, an envelope addressed to ‘The Prop. Alexandra Hotel, Scarborough’. It had the post mark ‘Scarborough 1900’ with a light blue Queen Victoria one penny stamp and enclosed in the envelope was a railway timetable for the following year, 1901, sent by the Great Central Railway Company.

This was at least proof that the hotel had been in existence up to that time but a major alteration took place in 1901 when half of the hotel was demolished for reasons that are as yet unknown but might have been to do with the trading pattern. Extended gardens were made from the site and the hotel’s name was changed from ‘Alexandra’ to ‘The Clarence Gardens Hotel’.

The hotel’s third name change was in 1938 and it still has that name today, ‘The Clifton’. In a brochure of the 1950s the hotel boasts;

‘Occupying a unique and unrivalled position overlooking the North Bay, The Clifton Hotel may assuredly claim the finest situation on the North East coast. From the windows splendid views may be obtained of the sea and sands extending from the Castle Hill in the south to the Whitby Moors over 20 miles to the north.’

The hotel itself is a place full of character, from the cellars in the basement to the five windowed turret rooms, there is history in every joint and corner, a bit like myself I suppose!

Many people keep returning here; it is quaint, quiet and homely and people seem to like our sort of friendliness. And the views over the bay and the castle are simply stunning. When I started, I wanted to find out more about the general history of the hotel right back to when it started and as the Clarence Gardens as it was by 1914, but the Owen connection became more important and, as I found out more and more, so it became all absorbing - all the connections to Sassoon and the Sit-well’s for instance.

This spread to include the First World War history of Scarborough - it was an important place in the war’s development after the bombardment of December 1914 and I have been in correspondence with the German museums who have sent me extracts of the records from their side;

Fig 5: Extract from the Owen display at the Clifton Hotel

some of it in highly ornate German print. As with all old buildings in Scarborough, the Clifton has its share of mysterious ‘goings on’ with sightings, feelings and many unexplained happenings in the hotel. Many guests have mentioned ‘feeling the presence’ around the rooms and Mark Riley in his book ‘Haunted Scarborough’ refers to it. One of the guests, a medium, claims to