THE COAST FROM WHITBY TO REDCAR
Along the three miles of sand running northwards from Whitby at the foot
of low alluvial cliffs, I have seen some of the finest sea-pictures on
this part of the coast. But although I have seen beautiful effects at
all times of the day, those that I remember more than any others are the
early mornings, when the sun was still low in the heavens, when,
standing on that fine stretch of yellow sand, one seemed to breathe an
atmosphere so pure, and to gaze at a sky so transparent, that some of
those undefined longings for surroundings that have never been realized
were instinctively uppermost in the mind. It is, I imagine, that vague
recognition of perfection which has its effect on even superficial minds
when impressed with beautiful scenery, for to what other cause can be
attributed the remark one hears, that such scenes 'make one feel good'?
Heavy waves, overlapping one another in their fruitless bombardment of
the smooth shelving sand, are filling the air with a ceaseless thunder.
The sun, shining from a sky of burnished gold, throws into silhouette
the twin lighthouses at the entrance to Whitby Harbour, and turns the
foaming wave-tops into a dazzling white, accentuated by the long shadows
of early day. Away to the north-west is Sandsend Ness, a bold headland
full of purple and blue shadows, and straight out to sea, across the
white-capped waves, are two tramp steamers, making, no doubt, for South
Shields or some port where a cargo of coal can be picked up. They are
plunging heavily, and every moment their bows seem to go down too far
to recover.
On mornings when the sea is quieter there are few who can resist the
desire to plunge into the blue waters, for at seven o'clock the shore is
so entirely deserted that one seems to be bathing from some primeval
shore where no other forms of life may be expected than some giant
crustaceans. This thought, perhaps, prompted the painful sensations I
allowed to prey upon me one night when I was walking along this
particular piece of shore from Whitby. I had decided to save time over
the road to Sandsend by getting on to the beach at Upgang, where the
lifeboat-house stands, by the entrance to a small beck. So dark was the
night that I could scarcely be sure that I had not lost my way, until I
had carefully felt the walls of the boat-house. Then I stepped
cautiously on to the sand, which I discovered as soon as my feet began
sinking at every step.
The harbour lights of Whitby were bright enough, but in the other
direction I could be sure of nothing. At first I seemed to have made a
mistake as to the state of the tide, for there appeared to be a
whiteness nearly up to the base of the cliffs; but this proved to be the
suffused glow from the lighthouses. Rain had been falling heavily for
the last few days, and had produced so many wide streams across the sand
that my knowledge of the usual ones merely hampered me. At first I began
stepping carefully over large black hollows in the sand, and then a
great black mark would show itself, which, offering no resistance to my
stick as I drew it across its surface, I could only imagine to be caused
by a flood of ink poured upon the beach by some horrible squid. My
musings on whether sea-monsters did ever disport themselves on the shore
under the cover of sufficiently dark nights would be broken into by
discovering that I had plunged into a stream of undiscoverable
dimensions, whose existence only revealed itself by the splash of my
boots. Retreating cautiously, I would take a run, and then a terrific
leap into the darkness, sometimes finding myself on firm dry sand, and
as frequently in the water.
I had decided that I should probably not reach Sandsend until daylight,
when a red lamp near the railway-bridge shone out as a beacon, and I
realized that I would soon be safe from the tentacles of sea-monsters.
When I awoke next morning, I dashed out on to the beach, and commenced
to walk rapidly in the direction of Whitby, in the hope that the tide
had left some of those black stains still showing. I wanted, also, to
examine some of the queer ridges I had so often stepped over, and some
of the rivers I had leapt. The rivers were there wide enough in places,
but nothing in the way of a ridge or any signs of those inky patches
could I discern. Careful examination showed, however, that here and
there the smooth shore was covered with sand of a rather reddish hue,
quite unworthy of remark in daylight. The foolishness of my
apprehensions seems apparent, but nevertheless I urge everyone to choose
a moonlit night and a companion of some sort for traversing these three
miles after sunset.
The two little becks finding their outlet at East Row and Sandsend are
lovely to-day; but their beauty must have been much more apparent before
the North-Eastern Railway put their black lattice girder bridges across
the mouth of each valley. But now that familiarity with these bridges,
which are of the same pattern across every wooded ravine up the
coast-line to Redcar, has blunted my impressions, I can think of the
picturesqueness of East Row without remembering the railway. It was in
this glen, where Lord Normanby's lovely woods make a background for the
pretty tiled cottages, the mill, and the old stone bridge, which make up
East Row, that the Saxons chose a home for their god Thor. [Since this
was written one or two new houses have been allowed to mar the
simplicity of the valley.--G. H.] Here they built some rude form of
temple, afterwards, it seems, converted into a hermitage. This was how
the spot obtained the name Thordisa, a name it retained down to 1620,
when the requirements of workmen from the newly-started alum-works at
Sandsend led to building operations by the side of the stream. The
cottages which arose became known afterwards as East Row.
A very little way inland is the village of Dunsley, which may have been
in existence in Roman times, for Ptolemy mentions Dunus Sinus as a bay
frequently used by the Romans as a landing-place. The foundations of
some ancient building can easily be traced in the rough grass at the
village cross-roads, now overlooked by a new stone house. But whatever
surprises Dunsley may have in store for those who choose to dig in the
likely places, the hamlet need not keep one long, for on either hand
there is a choice of breezy moorland or the astonishing beauties of
Mulgrave Woods. Before I knew this part of Yorkshire, and had merely
read of the woods as a sight to be visited from Whitby, I was prepared
for something at least as hackneyed as Hayburn Wyke. I was prepared for
direction-boards and artificial helps to the charms of certain aspects
of the streams. I certainly never anticipated that I should one day sigh
for a direction-board in this forest.
It was on my second visit to the woods that I determined to find a
particularly dramatic portion of one of the streams. My first ramble had
been in summer. I had been with one who knew the paths well, but now it
was late autumn and I was alone. I explored the paths for hours, and
traversed long glades ablaze with red and gold. I peered down through
the yellow leaves to the rushing streams below, where I could see the
great moss-grown boulders choking the narrow channels. But this
particular spot had gone. I was almost in despair, when two labourers by
great luck happened to come along one of the tracks. With their help I
found the place I was searching for, and the result of the time spent
there is given in one of the illustrations to this chapter. Go where you
will in Yorkshire, you will find no more fascinating woodland scenery
than this. From the broken walls and towers of the old Norman castle the
views over the ravines on either hand--for the castle stands on a lofty
promontory in a sea of foliage--are entrancing; and after seeing the
astoundingly brilliant colours with which autumn paints these trees,
there is a tendency to find the ordinary woodland commonplace. The
narrowest and deepest gorge is hundreds of feet deep in the shale. East
Row Beck drops into this canyon in the form of a waterfall at the upper
end, and then almost disappears among the enormous rocks strewn along
its circumscribed course. The humid, hothouse atmosphere down here
encourages the growth of many of the rarer mosses, which entirely cover
all but the newly-fallen rocks.
We can leave the woods by a path leading near Lord Normanby's modern
castle, and come out on to the road close to Lythe Church, where a great
view of sea and land is spread out towards the south. The long curving
line of white marks the limits of the tide as far as the entrance to
Whitby Harbour. The abbey stands out in its loneliness as of yore, and
beyond it are the black-looking, precipitous cliffs ending at Saltwick
Nab. Lythe Church, standing in its wind-swept graveyard full of
blackened tombstones, need not keep us, for, although its
much-modernized exterior is simple and ancient-looking, the interior is
devoid of any interest. It is the same tale at nearly every village in
this district, and to those who are able to grow enthusiastic in
antiquarian matters some parts of the county are disappointing. In East
Anglia and the southern counties even the smallest hamlets have often a
good church, with a conspicuous tower or spire; but in how many villages
in this riding do you find no church at all, as in the case of Staithes
and Runswick? Many of the old churches of Yorkshire were in a state of
great dilapidation at the beginning of last century, and a great effort
having been initiated by the then Archbishop, a fund was instituted to
help the various parishes to restore their buildings. It was a period
when architecture was at a low ebb, and the desire to sweep away
antiquity was certainly strong, for those churches not rebuilt from the
ground were so hacked and renovated that their interest and
picturesqueness has vanished. The churches at Pickering, Middleton,
Lastingham, and Kirkdale must, however, be pointed out as priceless
exceptions.
The road drops down a tremendous hill into Sandsend, where they talk of
going 'up t' bonk' to Lythe Church. A little chapel of ease in the
village accommodates the old and delicate folk, but the youth and the
generally able-bodied of Sandsend must climb the hill every Sunday. The
beck forms an island in the village, and the old stone cottages, bright
with new paint and neatly-trained creepers, stand in their gardens on
either side of the valley in the most picturesque fashion.
The walk along the rocky shore to Kettleness is dangerous unless the
tide is carefully watched, and the road inland through Lythe village is
not particularly interesting, so that one is tempted to use the railway,
which cuts right through the intervening high ground by means of two
tunnels. The first one is a mile long, and somewhere near the centre has
a passage out to the cliffs, so that even if both ends of the tunnel
collapsed there would be a way of escape. But this is small comfort when
travelling from Kettleness, for the down gradient towards Sandsend is
very steep, and in the darkness of the tunnel the train gets up a
tremendous speed, bursting into the open just where a precipitous drop
into the sea could be most easily accomplished.
The station at Kettleness is on the top of the huge cliffs, and to reach
the shore one must climb down a zigzag path. It is a broad and solid
pathway until halfway down, where it assumes the character of a
goat-track, being a mere treading down of the loose shale of which the
enormous cliff is formed. The sliding down of the crumbling rock
constantly carries away the path, but a little spade-work soon makes the
track firm again. This portion of the cliff has something of a history,
for one night in 1829 the inhabitants of many of the cottages originally
forming the village of Kettleness were warned of impending danger by
subterranean noises. Fearing a subsidence of the cliff, they betook
themselves to a small schooner lying in the bay. This wise move had not
long been accomplished, when a huge section of the ground occupied by
the cottages slid down the great cliff and the next morning there was
little to be seen but a sloping mound of lias shale at the foot of the
precipice. The villagers recovered some of their property by digging,
and some pieces of broken crockery from one of the cottages are still to
be seen on the shore near the ferryman's hut, where the path joins
the shore.
This sandy beach, lapped by the blue waves of Runswick Bay, is one of
the finest spots on the rocky coast-line of Yorkshire. A trickling
waterfall drops perpendicularly down the blackish rocks from a
considerable height, while above it are the towering cliffs of shale,
perfectly bare in one direction, and clothed with grass and bracken in
another. At the foot of the rocks a layer of jet appears a few inches
above the sand.
You look northwards across the sunlit sea to the rocky heights hiding
Port Mulgrave and Staithes, and on the further side of the bay you see
tiny Runswick's red roofs, one above the other, on the face of the
cliff. Here it is always cool and pleasant in the hottest weather, and
from the broad shadows cast by the precipices above one can revel in the
sunny land and sea-scapes without that fishy odour so unavoidable in the
villages. When the sun is beginning to climb down the sky in the
direction of Hinderwell, and everything is bathed in a glorious golden
light, the ferryman will row you across the bay to Runswick, but a
scramble over the rocks on the beach will be repaid by a closer view of
the now half-filled-up Hob Hole. The fisher-folk believed this cave to
be the home of a kindly-disposed fairy or hob, who seems to have been
one of the slow-dying inhabitants of the world of mythology implicitly
believed in by the Saxons. And these beliefs died so hard in these
lonely Yorkshire villages that until recent times a mother would carry
her child suffering from whooping-cough along the beach to the mouth of
the cave. There she would call in a loud voice, 'Hob-hole Hob! my
bairn's gotten t'kink cough. Tak't off, tak't off.' One can see the
child's parents gazing fearfully into the black depths of the cavern,
penetrating the cliff for 70 feet, and finally turning back to the
village in the full belief that the hob would stay the disease.
The steep paths and flights of roughly-built steps that wind above and
below the cottages are the only means of getting about in Runswick. The
butcher's cart every Saturday penetrates into the centre of the village
by the rough track which is all that is left of the good firm road from
Hinderwell after it has climbed down the cliff. To this central
position, close to the post-box, the householders come to buy their
supply of meat for Sunday, having their purchases weighed on scales
placed on the flap at the back of the cart. While the butcher is doing
his thriving trade the postman arrives to collect letters from the
pillar-box, Placing a small horn to his lips, he blows a blast to warn
the villagers that the post is going, and, having waited for the last
letter, climbs slowly up the steep pathway to Hinderwell.
Halfway up to the top he pauses and looks over the fruit-trees and the
tiles and chimney-pots below him, to the bright blue waters of the bay,
with Kettleness beyond, now all pink and red in the golden light of late
afternoon. This scene is more suggestive of the Mediterranean than
Yorkshire, for the blueness of the sea seems almost unnatural, and the
golden greens of the pretty little gardens among the houses seem perhaps
a trifle theatrical; but the fisher-folk play their parts too well, and
there is nothing make-believe about the delicious bread-and-butter and
the newly-baked cakes which accompany the tea awaiting us in a
spotlessly clean cottage close by.
The same form of disaster which destroyed Kettleness village caused the
complete ruin of Runswick in 1666, for one night, when some of the
fisher-folk were holding a wake over a corpse, they had unmistakable
warnings of an approaching landslip. The alarm was given, and the
villagers, hurriedly leaving their cottages, saw the whole place slide
downwards and become a mass of ruins. No lives were lost, but, as only
one house remained standing, the poor fishermen were only saved from
destitution by the sums of money collected for their relief.
Architecturally speaking, Hinderwell is a depressing village, and there
is little to remember about the place except an extraordinary block of
two or three shops, suitable only for a business street in a big city,
but dumped right into the middle of this village of low cottages. The
church is modern enough to be uninteresting, but in the graveyard St.
Hilda's Well, from which the name Hinderwell is a corruption, may
still be seen.
In 1603 there was a sudden and terrible outbreak of plague in the
village. It only lasted from September 1 to November 10, but in that
short time forty-nine people died. It seems that the infection was
brought by some men from a 'Turkey ship' that had been stranded on the
coast, but, strangely enough, the disease does not appear to have been
carried into the other villages in the neighbourhood.
Scarcely two miles from Hinderwell is the fishing-hamlet of Staithes,
wedged into the side of a deep and exceedingly picturesque beck.
Here--and it is the same at Runswick--one is obliged to walk warily
during the painter's season, for fear of either obstructing the view of
the man behind the easel you have just passed, or out of regard for the
feelings of some girls just in front. There are often no more chances of
standing still in Staithes than may be enjoyed on a popular golf-links
on a fine Saturday afternoon. These folk at Staithes do not disturb one
with cries of 'Fore!' but with that blank Chinaman's stare which comes
to anyone who paints in public.
The average artist is a being who is quite unable to recognise
architectural merit. He sees everything to please him if the background
of his group be sufficiently tumble-down and derelict. If this be
incorrect, how could such swarms of artistic folk paint and actually
lodge in Staithes? The steep road leading past the station drops down
into the village, giving a glimpse of the beck crossed by its ramshackle
wooden foot-bridge--the view one has been prepared for by guide-books
and picture postcards. Lower down you enter the village street. Here the
smell of fish comes out to greet you, and one would forgive the place
this overflowing welcome if one were not so shocked at the dismal aspect
of the houses on either side of the way. Many are of comparatively
recent origin, others are quite new, and a few--a very few--are old; but
none have any architectural pretensions or any claims to
picturesqueness, and only a few have the neat and respectable look one
is accustomed to expect after seeing Robin Hood's Bay.
Staithes had filled me with so much pleasant expectancy that my first
walk down this street of dirty, ugly houses had brought me into a
querulous frame of mind, and I wondered irritably why the women should
all wear lilac-coloured bonnets, when a choice of colour is not
difficult as far as calico is concerned. Those women who were in
mourning had dyed theirs black, and these assorted well with the colour
of the stone of many of the houses.
I hurried down on to the little fish-wharf--a wooden structure facing
the sea--hoping to find something more cheering in the view of the
little bay, with its bold cliffs, and the busy scene where the cobles
were drawn up on the shingle. Here my spirits revived, and I began to
find excuses for the painters. The little wharf, in a bad state of
repair, like most things in the place, was occupied by groups of
stalwart fisher-folk, men and women.
The men were for the most part watching their women-folk at work. They
were also to an astonishing extent mere spectators in the arduous work
of hauling the cobles one by one on to the steep bank of shingle. A
tackle hooked to one of the baulks of timber forming the staith was
being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a listless
fashion leaning their shoulders against the boat itself. With the last
'Heave-ho!' at the shortened tackle the women laid hold of the nets, and
with casual male assistance laid them out on the shingle, removed any
fragments of fish, and generally prepared them for stowing in the
boat again.
It is evidently an accepted state of things at Staithes that the work of
putting out to sea and the actual catching of the fish is sufficient for
the men-folk, for the feminine population do their arduous tasks with a
methodical matter-of-factness which surprises only the stranger. I was
particularly struck on one occasion with the sight of a good-looking and
very neatly dressed young fishwife who was engaged in that very
necessary but exceedingly unpleasant task of cutting open fish and
removing the perishable portions. With unerring precision the sharp
knife was plunged into each cod or haddock, and the fish was in its
marketable condition in shorter time than one can write. A little boy
plunged them into a pail of ruddy-looking water, and from thence into
the regulation fish box or basket that finds its way to the Metropolis.
A change has come over the inhabitants of Staithes since 1846, when Mr.
Ord describes the fishermen as 'exceedingly civil and courteous to
strangers, and altogether free from that low, grasping knavery peculiar
to the larger class of fishing-towns.' Without wishing to be
unreasonably hard on Staithes, I am inclined to believe that this
character is infinitely better than these folk deserve, and even when
Mr. Ord wrote of the place I have reason to doubt the civility shown by
them to strangers. It is, according to some who have known Staithes for
a long while, less than fifty years ago that the fisher-folk were
hostile to a stranger on very small provocation, and only the entirely
inoffensive could expect to sojourn in the village without being a
target for stones. The incursion of the artistic hordes has been a great
factor in the demoralization of the village, for who would not be
mercenary when besought at all hours of the day to stand before a canvas
or a camera? Thus, the harmless stranger who strays on to the staith
with a camera is obliged to pay for 'an afternoon's 'baccy' if he want
an opportunity to obtain more than a snapshot of a picturesque group. He
may try to capture a lonely old fisherman by asking if he would mind
standing still for 'just one second,' but the old fellow will move away
instantly unless his demand for payment be readily complied with.
No doubt many of the superstitions of Staithes people have languished or
died out in recent years, and among these may be included a particularly
primitive custom when the catches of fish had been unusually small. Bad
luck of this sort could only be the work of some evil influence, and to
break the spell a sheep's heart had to be procured, into which many pins
were stuck. The heart was then burnt in a bonfire on the beach, in the
presence of the fishermen, who danced round the flames.
In happy contrast to these heathenish practices was the resolution
entered into and signed by the fishermen of Staithes, in August, 1835,
binding themselves 'on no account whatever' to follow their calling on
Sundays, 'nor to go out with our boats or cobbles to sea, either on the
Saturday or Sunday evenings.' They also agreed to forfeit ten shillings
for every offence against the resolution, and the fund accumulated in
this way, and by other means, was administered for the benefit of aged
couples and widows and orphans.
The men of Staithes are known up and down the east coast of Great
Britain as some of the very finest types of fishermen. Their cobles,
which vary in size and colour, are uniform in design and the brilliance
of their paint. Brick red, emerald green, pungent blue and white, are
the most favoured colours, but orange, pink, yellow, and many others,
are to be seen.
Not only are fish of the present age in evidence at Staithes, but
nowhere along this coast can one find better examples of those of the
Jurassic period. When the tide has exposed the scaur which runs out from
Colburn Nab, at the mouth of the beck, a one can examine masses of
recently fallen rocks, the new faces of which are almost invariably
covered with ammonites or clusters of fossil bivalves. The only
hindrance to a close examination of these new falls from the cliffs is
the serious danger of another fall occurring at the same spot. The
fisher-folk are very kind in pointing out this peril to ardent
geologists and those of a less scientific outlook, who merely enjoy the
exercise of scrambling over great masses of rock. After having been
warned that most of the face of the cliff above is 'qualified' to come
down at any moment, there is a strong inclination to betake one's self
to a safe distance, where, unfortunately, the wear and tear of the waves
have in most cases so battered the traces of early marine life that
there is little to attack with the hammer to compare with what can be
seen in the new falls. The scaur also presents an interesting feature in
its round ironstone nodules, half embedded in the smooth rocky floor.
Looking northwards there is a grand piece of coast scenery. The masses
of Boulby Cliffs, rising 660 feet from the sea, are the highest on the
Yorkshire coast. The waves break all round the rocky scaur, and fill the
air with their thunder, while the strong wind blows the spray into
beards which stream backwards from the incoming crests.
The upper course of Staithes Beck consists of two streams, flowing
through deep, richly-wooded ravines. They follow parallel courses very
close to one another for three or four miles, but their sources extend
from Lealholm Moor to Wapley Moor. Kilton Beck runs through another
lovely valley densely clothed in trees, and full of the richest woodland
scenery. It becomes more open in the neighbourhood of Loftus, and from
thence to the sea at Skinningrove the valley is green and open to the
heavens. Loftus is on the borders of the Cleveland mining district, and
it is for this reason that the town has grown to a considerable size.
But although the miners' new cottages are unpicturesque, and the church
only dates from 1811, the situation is pretty, owing to the profusion of
trees among the houses. Skinningrove has railway-sidings and
branch-lines running down to it, and on the hill above the cottages
stands a cluster of blast-furnaces. In daylight they are merely ugly,
but at night, with tongues of flame, they speak of the potency of
labour. I can still see that strange silhouette of steel cylinders and
connecting girders against a blue-black sky, with silent masses of flame
leaping into the heavens.
It was long before iron-ore was smelted here, before even the old
alum-works had been started, that Skinningrove attained to some sort of
fame through a wonderful visit, as strange as any of those recounted by
Mr. Wells. It was in the year 1535--for the event is most carefully
recorded in a manuscript of the period--that some fishermen of
Skinningrove caught a Sea Man. This was such an astounding fact to
record that the writer of the old manuscript explains that 'old men that
would be loath to have their credyt crackt by a tale of a stale date,
report confidently that ... a _sea-man_ was taken by the fishers.' They
took him up to an old disused house, and kept him there for many weeks,
feeding him on raw fish, because he persistently refused the other sorts
of food offered him. To the people who flocked from far and near to
visit him he was very courteous, and he seems to have been particularly
pleased with any 'fayre maydes' who visited him, for he would gaze at
them with a very earnest countenance, 'as if his phlegmaticke breaste
had been touched with a sparke of love.' The Sea Man was so well behaved
that the fisher-folk began to feel sufficiently sure of his desire to
live with them to cease to keep watch on his movements. 'One day,' we
are told, 'he prively stoale out of Doores, and ere he coulde be
overtaken recovered the sea, whereinto he plunged himself; yet as one
that woulde not unmanerly depart without taking of his leave, from the
mydle upwardes he raysed his shoulders often above the waves, and
makinge signes of acknowledgeing his good enterteinment to such as
beheld him on the shore, as they interpreted yt;--after a pretty while
he dived downe and appeared no more.'
This strangely detailed account says that instead of a voice the Sea Man
'skreaked,' but this is of small interest compared to whether he had a
tail or any fish-like attributes. The fact that he escaped would suggest
the presence of legs, but the historian is silent on this
all-important matter.
The lofty coast-line we have followed all the way from Sandsend
terminates abruptly at Huntcliff Nab, the great promontory which is
familiar to visitors to Saltburn. Low alluvial cliffs take the place of
the rocky precipices, and the coast becomes flatter and flatter as you
approach Redcar and the marshy country at the mouth of the Tees. The
original Saltburn, consisting of a row of quaint fishermen's cottages,
still stands entirely alone, facing the sea on the Huntcliff side of the
beck, and from the wide, smooth sands there is little of modern Saltburn
to be seen besides the pier. For the rectangular streets and blocks of
houses have been wisely placed some distance from the edge of the grassy
cliffs, leaving the sea-front quite unspoiled. It would, perhaps, be
well to own that I have never seen Saltburn during the summer season,
and for this reason I may think better of the resort than if my visit
had been in midsummer. It was during October. The sun was shining
brightly, and a strong wind was blowing off the land. The wide,
new-looking streets were spotlessly clean, and in most of them there was
no sign of life at all. It was the same on the broad sweep of sands, for
when I commenced a drawing on the cliffs the only living creatures I
could see were two small dogs. About noon a girls' school was let loose
upon the sands, and for half an hour a furious game of hockey was
fought. Then I was left alone again, with the great expanse of sea, the
yellow margin of sand, and the reddish-brown cliffs, all beneath the
wind-swept sky.
The elaborately-laid-out gardens on the steep banks of Skelton Beck are
the pride and joy of Saltburn, for they offer a pleasant contrast to the
bare slopes on the Huntcliff side and the flat country towards
Kirkleatham. But in this seemingly harmless retreat there used to be
heard horrible groanings, and I have no evidence to satisfy me that they
have altogether ceased. For in this matter-of-fact age such a story
would not be listened to, and thus those who hear the sounds may be
afraid to speak of them. The groanings were heard, they say, 'when all
wyndes are whiste and the sea restes unmoved as a standing poole.' At
times they were so loud as to be heard at least six miles inland, and
the fishermen feared to put out to sea, believing that the ocean was 'as
a greedy Beaste raginge for Hunger, desyers to be satisfyed with men's
carcases.' There were also at that time certain rocks towards Huntcliff
Nab, left bare at low-tide, where 'Seales in greate Heardes like Swine'
were to be seen basking in the sun. 'For their better scuritye,' says
the old writer, 'they put in use a kind of military discipline, warily
preparing against a soddaine surprize, for on the outermost Rocke one
great Seale or more keepes sentinell, which upon the first inklinge of
any danger, giveth the Alarme to the rest by throweing of Stones, or
making a noise in the water, when he tumbles down from the Rocke, the
rest immediately doe the like, insomuch that yt is very hard to overtake
them by cunning.'
In 1842 Redcar was a mere village, though more apparent on the map than
Saltburn; but, like its neighbour, it has grown into a great
watering-place, having developed two piers, a long esplanade other
features, which I am glad to leave to those for whom they were made, and
betake myself to the more romantic spots so plentiful in this
broad county.