OUT ON YE!

LIONEL CHARLTON AND HIS HISTORY OF WHITBY 1779

2011-11-27T18:16:00.000+01:00

After a classical education at the University of Edinburgh, Lionel Charlton settled in Whitby around the year 1748. He was a lame man with a withered hand, yet these obstacles did not prevent him from setting up a school which was for many years the principal one in Whitby.

Considered by many a strict schoolmaster, he was nevertheless a man of great integrity and would not accept anything other than his agreed salary from his employers. He was stubborn in attitude and never surrendered his point of view in an argument.

Around 1762 Charlton published a paper claiming that extracting money from the local fishermen in taxes known as tithes was unjust. Dr. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, was in charge of this process, and he felt this paper reflected badly on his character, especially as Charlton seemingly pulled no punches whilst voicing his opinion of the Bishop.

The South East Prospect of Whitby Abbey 1773

Dr. Hayter threatened to prosecute Charlton unless he retracted his 'obnoxious expressions'. True to his character Charlton refused point blank, immediately putting his career, the safety of his family and his financial security in peril. This incident may well have ruined the dogmatic schoolmaster had the Bishop not died , putting a stop to the prosecution.

Toward the end of his life, after a long acquaintance with the town, Lionel Charlton undertook the writing of his History of Whitby. Having his employer Mr Cholmley's library at his disposal and access to the records of the Abbey, several years were spent in research.

The title page and the canvas map

Before September 1776 about a hundred subscribers were obtained. In 1777 the book was advertised as 'speedily to be published'. Even so the subscribers had to wait unti 1779 before holding the long anticipated volume in their hands.

This First Edition contained a canvas fold out map of Whitby which was reprinted by Young in his history of the town in 1817. Charlton's book is not an easy read. It is arranged chronologically, therefore subjects are not gathered together, but occur piecemeal throughout the work. It contains a huge amount of charters and exhibits 'a greater display of laborious research than of solid judgement'.

Many thanks to Mr Stephen Boddy for lending me his precious first edition of this book

ABSOLUTE ZERO

2011-11-10T13:49:00.000+01:00

This is a slightly unusual post from OUT ON YE! as it is music related, but it is also kind of literature related (in the widest sense) so I thought this might be the place to publish it.

Long thought lost to the world (and some would say for the better) I came across this fanzine dedicated to the Whitby music scene. It came out in 1987, and I clearly remember pounding away on an old typewriter deep into the early hours of the morning producing it.

It ran for two issues, and this premiere publication includes interviews with M.O.D., Sons of Gods Mate, live reviews of the likes of Indian Dream and Chumbawamba, a cartoon or two and a Wilfred Owen poem to round things off.

Click on the images for a readable version.

LEECH ON THE BEACH

2011-11-06T12:48:00.001+01:00

On the 24th of September this year we were down by the beach when my five year old daughter Iris came up from the sand clutching something in her hand. It looked like a curled up worm with a flattened body, and I couldn't recognise it as one of the creatures normally found on the shore.

Placing it in a paper cup of sea water, it stretched out and fixed one end of its body to the side of the cup with a sucker. It was clearly a leech. After taking a few photographs for identification purposes, the leech was placed in a pool under some rocks so it could crawl away from predatory seagulls until the tide came in.

At home, despite consulting numerous identification guides I couldn't find a match. Marine leeches prey on fish and are usually found attached to them when they are caught. It didn't look like a marine leech.

The photos were posted on the Wild About Britain water life forum and It's fair to say they caused much consternation. Someone even suggested that it might be a juvenile hagfish (a jawless fish similar to a lamprey). Of course the sucker and highly extendable body precluded this. It was certainly a member of the Hirudinea, the leech family.

There are lots of pipes that drain water from the cliffs onto the beach just below where our beach hut is situated, and it struck me that this might not be a marine species at all, but a fresh water or terrestrial creature that had been washed out of one of these ducts. Indeed the most likely ID turned out to be the rare terrestrial leech Trocheta subviridis.

Quite capable of living in water with a high level of pollution from sewerage, the leech was undoubtedly living in one of the drainage pipes and was flushed out onto the sand. Trocheta subviridis is a predator of earthworms and leaves the water to hunt. There are reports of it crawling up plugholes into people's sinks and it is sometimes dug up in gardens. Because of its lifestyle it is sometimes called the Amphibious Leech.

In the journal Parasitology, vol. III, p. 182 ther is an account of one being found on an allotment in 1922.
In April of this year a specimen was sent to the Agricultural Department, Armstrong College, by Mr S. Giles of South Shields, along with a note explaining that it had been found “down in the first spit of the soil” in one of a group of allotments there. It was obviously a specimen of a leech, but the specimen was submitted later, to Mr John Ritchie, the Museum, Perth, who kindly identified the species as Trocheta subviridis, and who mentioned that "this gives so far as I am aware, a more northern habitat than hitherto recorded".

Definitive identification of leeches needs to be carried out when the creature is still alive and its body relatively transparent. Also a handlens is essential to count eye spots. This has been a lesson to me. Now whenever I go to the beach, I always take a magnifying glass of some sort. You never know what you might find.

A TALE OF TWO WRECKS

2011-10-16T23:39:00.001+02:00

By Richard Locker

I dared not go below, I dared not leave the helm so here all night I stayed, and in the dimness of the night I saw it - Him! God forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. It is better to die like a man; to die like a sailor in the blue water no man can object. But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He - it! - dare not touch; and then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain.

Taken from the log of the ‘Demeter’ (Varna to Whitby)

On the 24th October 1885 the town of Whitby bore witness to an incident that would later become the basis for one of the most famous shipwrecks in the history of literature.

The following extract is taken from an article that appeared in the Whitby Gazette on the 31st October 1885.

A little later in the afternoon a schooner was descried to the south of the harbour, outside the rocks. Her position was one of great danger; for being evidently unable to beat off, there seemed nothing for it but to be driven among the huge breakers on the scar. Her commander was apparently a man well acquainted with his profession, for with consummate skill he steered his trim little craft before the wind, crossing the rocks by what is known as the ’sledway’ and bringing her in a good position for the harbour mouth.

The piers and the cliffs were thronged with expectant people, and the lifeboat ‘Harriot Forteath’ was got ready for use in case the craft should miss the entrance to the harbour and be driven on shore. When a few hundred yards from the piers she was knocked about considerably by the heavy seas, but on crossing the bar the sea calmed a little and she sailed into smooth water. A cheer broke from the spectators on the pier when they saw her in safety.

Two pilots were in waiting, and at once gave instruction to those on board, but meanwhile the captain not realising the necessity of keeping on her steerage, allowed her to fall off and lowered sail, thus causing the vessel to swing towards the sand on the east side of the harbour. On seeing this danger the anchor was dropped, but they found no hold and she drifted into Collier’s Hope and struck the ground. She purported to be the schooner ’Dmitry’ of Narva, Russia, Captain Sikki, with a crew of seven hands, ballasted with silver sand. During the night of Saturday the men worked incessantly upon her that her masts went by the board and on Sunday morning, she lay high and dry a broken and complete wreck, firmly embedded in the sand.

The wreck of the Dmitry (Frank meadow Sutcliffe)

The connection between the Irish author Bram Stoker and Whitby are very well documented, it is also well known that the wrecking of the Russian schooner the ‘Dmitry’ inspired Stoker to create one of the most memorable scenes in Dracula - the arrival of the Count in England.

…leaping from wave to wave as it rushed as headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour. The search light followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other form could be seen on deck at all. A great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead man! However, all took place more quickly than it takes to write these words. The schooner paused not, but rushed across the harbour, pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel washed by many tides and many storms into the south-east corner of the pier jutting under the East Cliff, known locally as Tate Hill Pier.

The Flag of Distress: The brig Mary and Agnes (Frank Meadow Sutcliffe)

The Dmitry was not the only vessel to come to grief at Whitby on the 24th October, earlier in the day a Scarborough brig named Mary and Agnes was pounded ashore whilst sailing from Newcastle to London with a cargo of scrap iron. This incident appeared to be even more dramatic than that of the Dmitry as this
passage taken from the same Gazette article dated 31st October 1885 illustrates.

In the mean while the lifesaving brigade by a well directed rocket threw a line over the brigantine which now was seen to be the Mary and Agnes, of Scarborough. It seemed a long time before the crew on board fixed the apparatus, but eventually this was done, and the youngest of them, a lad of about fifteen years, was sent ashore in the breeches. In being dragged towards the shore the poor little fellow was struck by many seas and considerably buffeted about. There were, however, many ready and willing among those on shore to rush into the water and bring him to land.

What makes this day’s events all the more dramatic is that both shipwrecks were captured on camera by the famous Victorian photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe.

THE WALKING MEN

2011-09-16T13:25:00.000+02:00

The ongoing battle to save Whitby's iconic piers demands that all of us realise what an incredible feat of engineering it took to build them.

Looking at these photographs taken in 1913 you could almost be forgiven for thinking that Whitby had been invaded by Martian machines, reminiscent of those found in H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, whose sole aim would appear to be the destruction of the town.

But these ’Walking Men’ as the machines were colloquially known, were in fact here to build the east and west pier extensions, a necessary improvement which helped vessels trying to negotiate the sometimes treacherous harbour mouth.

More about the piers from OUT ON YE!

JOIN THE WHITBY GAZETTE'S CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE PIERS

FLINT JACK: PRINCE OF COUNTERFEITERS

2011-09-10T13:01:00.000+02:00

By Richard Locker

The Victorian era was an age teeming with heroes and villains, from an abundance of pioneers, inventers and forward thinkers, to the numerous ‘evil’ empires that sought to knock Great Britain from its imperial throne. Even the privileged and academic worlds of geology and archaeology had their share of good and bad from such luminaries as Charles Lyell and Lieutenant - General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers right through to the villainous, like the infamous anti-hero Flint Jack (aka Jack Flint, Fossil Willy, Bones, Shirtless, Cockney Bill, the Old Antiquarian, Snake Billy, Skin and Grief).

Edward Simpson was born in 1815 in the village of Sleights. The family appeared unexceptional, his father been a sailor, and it was probably assumed that the young Edward would follow in his footstep when he eventually came of age. But his life was destined to take a different path when at the age of fourteen Edward became a servant to the local Geologist and Historian Dr George Young.

It seemed that this is where Edward learnt the rudiments of his trade as he followed Dr Young on his fossil - hunting expedition along the Yorkshire coastline. Some time later he left the services of Dr Young and took up with a Dr Ripley who was also a keen local historian.

After Dr Ripley’s death Edward ostensibly became an itinerant worker and it was on these tramps that he began to acquire his numerous aliases. At first he etched out a meagre living by gathering fossils found along the cliffs of Whitby and selling them to the local dealers. In 1841 he extended his ‘walks’ to include Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington, where he also became quite an expert in cleaning the fossils.

But it was on a return visit to Whitby when Edward met with a dubious character called Mr Dotchon, who showed Edward his first flint arrow head. Mr Dotchon went on to inquire if it was possible for Edward to replicate the arrow heads. Edward, fascinated by this questionable venture, decided to take up the proposition, and so it was that Flint Jack was born.

Replicating the fine workmanship of a genuine flint arrow head was a lot harder than Flint Jack had first imagined. In his despair Jack decided that however the Ancient Britons had crafted such tools had long been lost to antiquity, until one day when, purely be accident, he finally discovered a means of achieving the desired effect.

It was said that one morning whilst Jack puzzled over the intricacies of a flint arrow he became distracted by a damaged gate, he took off the hasp which was hanging loose and absentmindedly struck the ring against a piece of flint. To his astonishment off flew a fine flint flake and upon trying again and again he soon discovered he had found the perfect tool for his needs.

This was the defining moment that sent Flint Jack head long on his deceitful enterprise, along with flint tools he also set about reproducing British and Roman urns, which he manufactured first in Bridlington and then in a hut at Stainton Dale in the vicinity of Raven Hall, but possibly the most unscrupulous ‘find’ was ‘discovered’ in 1846 at Pickering, when he used an old tea tray to fashion a piece of armour. The Roman breast plate, he claimed, was unearthed at a site near Cawthorne camp on the outskirts of town. In fact he was so proud of his ‘discovery’ that when he had finished it he put it on and marched into the town of Malton, where he immediately found a buyer for the piece.

Jack eventually branched out and after teaming up with an art dealer named Block in Colchester move onto London, where Block acting as Jack’s agent set about selling the ‘finds’. It is no small credit to Flint Jack’s ingenuity and charisma that he was able to fool the establishment for so long . For not only did he pray upon the amateur Victorian collector he was also able to sell artefacts to museums and other serious collections across the country, including numerous pieces to the British Museum itself.

But in the end it seems that Flint Jack was his own worst enemy, as this passage from the Whitby Gazette at the time proclaims :-

It is to be regretted that a man so capable should be destined to waste his information among the occupants of the common lodging-house or the beer-house kitchen. On being asked recently, in Malton, what he would do if he was put into a hogshead of beer, he replied, “I would drink myself dry!”. Such is Flint Jack.

The following excerpt is a concise account of Flint Jack’s trial published in the Whitby Gazette on 19th March 1867

"Flint Jack" - A notorious Yorkshireman - one of the greatest impostors of our times -was last week sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for felony at Bedford. The prisoner gave the name of Edward Jackson, but his real name is Edward Simpson, of Sleights, Whitby, although he is equally well known as John Wilson, of Burlington, and Jerry Taylor, of Billery-dale, Yorkshire Moors. Probably no man is wider known than Simpson is under his aliases in various districts - viz. "Old Antiquarian", "Fossil Willy", "Bones", "Shirtless","Cockney Bill", and "Flint Jack", the latter name universally.

Under one or other of these designations Edward Simpson is known throughout England, Scotland and Ireland - in fact, wherever geologists or archaeologists resided, or wherever a museum was established, there did Flint Jack assuredly pass off his forged fossils and antiquities.

He imbibed, however, a liking for drink, and he admits that from that cause his life for 20 years past has been one of great misery. To supply his cravings for liquor he set about the forging of both fossils and antiquities about 23 years ago.

In 1859, during one of his trips to London, Flint Jack was charged by Professor Tennant with the forgery of antiquities. He confessed, and was introduced on the platform of various societies, and exhibited the simple mode of his manufacture of spurious flints. From that time his trade became precarious, and Jack sunk deeper and deeper into habits of dissipation, until at length he became a thief, and was last week convicted on two counts and sent to prison for 12 months.

NORTH YORKSHIRE RAILWAYS: A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

2011-09-10T13:00:00.001+02:00

This film, made by railway enthusiast Frank Dean in 1966, shows the last journey made along the Whitby to Scarborough railway line prior to it being dismantled in the devastating Beeching cuts. The narration is excellent and the music chosen surprisingly evocative and haunting.

The film largely speaks for itself, beginning with a man reading news of the line closures in a copy of the Whitby Gazette (when it was still a broadsheet) on Whitby Station. Frank and his wife Heather spent every weekend filming the Yorkshire lines scheduled to be axed by Dr Beeching's destructive purge.

Tagged onto the 1966 film is a section shot in 1967 in which contractors travel the length of the line stopping at stations along the way to gauge the value of railway property and see what can be sold for profit.

For people who may know the place well, at around 2.50 minutes is a view of the Whitby Gasworks with the gasometers still in place.

The film ends with the sad sight of workmen lifting the tracks of what must have been one of England's most beautiful stratches of railway.

More information on Frank Dean and his films at the Yorkshire Film Archive

SUMMER BREAK

2011-06-11T18:29:00.004+02:00

Unfortunately OUT ON YE! will be taking a short break until September. I need to do a study course for work which is going to take up quite a bit of time, so rather than publish rushed and poorly designed posts, I'm putting the blog on hold for a bit.

Don't panic though!

Regular contributor Richard Locker has just started his own blog Thoughts in Fits and Starts. Its brand spanking new and well worth a visit.

OUT ON YE! will be back in September. Until then, have a marvellous Summer.

THE OLD MULGRAVE CASTLE INN

2011-05-09T12:44:00.005+02:00

By Richard Locker

The story of The Old Mulgrave Castle Inn, like numerous other public houses in Whitby, can now only be found amongst the pages of local history books. But right up until the year 1887 - when it eventually fell into the sea - this public house was perched atop the cliffs at Upgang on the outskirts of the town, where it commanded a domineering view of a large swathe of the coastline, from the town’s harbour mouth right up to the village of Sandsend and beyond, in fact it was the perfect position for an Inn who’s major concerns were largely disreputable.

Little is known of the origins of the pub, but it is thought to been serving ales as long ago as the 1700s, and of course it was also a well known hub for the local smuggling gangs, as was proved by an incident that occurred in 1817.

It was in this years that a particularly daring 'run' took place. Included in the cargo run were five hundred 'tubs' of gin. The 'Preventative Men' - who happened at the time to be in strong force in Whitby, having come over from Hull - heard of a 'landing' which had taken place somewhere to the north of the town. They duly searched the neighbourhood of Upgang.

After searching for a long time without finding anything, they were just about to give up in disgust when a stonemason noticed that a certain stone in a retaining wall appeared to have recently been disturbed. He called the attention of the Preventative Men to this and, upon removal of the stone the searchers found a huge store of two hundred tubs, which were removed to Whitby in carts and wagons. The men in charge of the wagons were, as usual, in sympathy with the smugglers and ’lost’ more than a few of their tubs on their way into town.

A mounting blocking found in the vicinity of Upgang, possibly all that
remains of the Inn

When in Sandgate, a linchpin of one of the wagons was conveniently removed and the cumbersome vehicle upset, bursting a good number of the tubs of gin. The liquor ran into the gutters of the street, and was eagerly scooped up by the large crowd which had been drawn out of doors at the news of the capture. Those who found themselves at a loss for a scoop took off their boots and used these. Altogether a sad day for the local ’Pussyfoots.’

The following day, the Preventative Men renewed their search at Upgang, but without results, as the rest, and far the larger part of the cargo, had been removed during the night, with an audacity which deserved success. Nearly two hundred tubs were placed aboard a fishing boat, one of the Staithes 'yacker' type, and the vessel was actually brought into Whitby harbour and laid up on Bell Island 'for repairs', during the progress of which the incriminating cargo was quietly removed.
Account taken from Shaw Jeffrey’s ‘Whitby Lore and Legend’.

It seems that the Inn carried on with it’s risky business regardless of the probable close scrutiny the 1817 event would have incurred. The only other mention of a brush with the law was in 1860, when the then licensee a Mr Cornforth was charged with opening his house for the sale of drink before half past twelve on Sunday. After been cautioned he was ordered to pay costs, along with a Mr Thomas Pattison of the White House, who was also summoned on the same charge.

Mr Cornforth was in fact the last tenant of the Old Mulgrave Castle Inn as in the August of 1885 the justice refused to renew the Inn’s licence, because of the building‘s situation, which was by then was dangerously close to the edge of the cliff.

The area where the inn was situated, now part of Whitby golf course

BACK UP HOME: A TALE OF JIGSAWS, NARROW ALLEYS AND BOAT GNOMES

2011-05-02T11:36:00.001+02:00

Text and pictures: Rachel Cockett

Born and bought up in Whitby. I live in Worcestershire and work in a museum in Birmingham. I recently went back up home to see my parents and to visit the places of my childhood. I met old friends, new friends, mysterious characters and at least one invisible little man.

Might it be the home of Elphi the hob? For the price of some daily bread, creamy milk and cheese Elphi keeps the museum clean and tidy. This video tells the story of what happened at Ryedale when the bad curator (who didn’t believe in Elphi) took charge.

Click here for Elphi's video

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MUSEUM

Captain Cook & Staithes Heritage Centre. A member of the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), NEVER has the word *independent* been more appropriately applied.

AND FINALLY...No visit back up home is complete without popping in to Whitby Museum. Home to the Hand of Glory and the Tempest Prognosticator (a Leech Barometer , but you knew that). My new favourite object is Sea Bishop, “made by fisherman for sale to gullible visitors”, a tiny preaching bishop formed from dried fishy bits, complete with mitre and…tail.

DRACULA 1977

2011-04-16T01:00:00.002+02:00

By Richard Locker

When Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula first appeared in 1897 it was regarded by the Victorian reading public as just another fantastical ‘invasion’ story, similar in vein to H.G Wells’ War Of The Worlds. It wouldn’t be until the 20th century when the book began to be adapted for the screen, that the story of the Count would attain it’s legendary status and the town of Whitby would forever become inextricably linked with the demon vampire.

Although Whitby is intrinsic to the story both Hollywood and the British Hammer Horror films seemed to disregard this fact, either opting for shooting in alternative locations around the UK, (in Hammer’s case usually for budgetary reasons), or as would happen in some movies the town was simply ignored and the arrival of the Count transposed directly to London (Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is one such film).

In fact it wasn’t until 1977 when the BBC commissioned a three part mini series based on the novel, that the town was used for the actual scenes set in Whitby.

This BBC adaptation of the book is now considered by both critics and fans alike to be the most faithful. The film historian Stuart Gailbrath IV said that ‘Count Dracula remains one of the best-ever adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel’ despite a ‘couple of missteps’, remarking that ’the cast is excellent’, in particular praising the performance of Frank Finlay (Van Helsing) and Louis Jordan (Count Dracula), who he calls especially good.

The critic Steve Calvert agreed that Count Dracula was ‘one of the better versions’ of Stoker’s novel, calling it ‘perhaps even the best.’ he felt that ’few actors have ever played the role of Van Helsing as convincingly’ as Frank Finlay, that ‘without doubt, Jack Shepherd is the best on-screen embodiment there as ever been of the fly munching Renfield’, and remarked of Jourdan’s performance, ‘(His) Dracula …. exudes a quieter kind of evil. A calculating, educated evil with a confidence and purpose all of it’s own.’

Of course the intervening years have not been kind to certain aspects of the film, it could be said that some of the special effects are rudimentary to say the least. But the direction, editing, sound and visual imagery are all used to powerful effect and make for an unsettling experience, relying more on a subtle sense of dread, rather than the usual blood letting that is often associated with other versions of the story.

Some of the more memorable scenes look almost experimental in style, with a strange surrealist quality about them. Even the fact that the external scenes are all shot in film and the interiors on video only seems to add to the feeling of oddness that is suffused throughout the film.

MAYBECK SPRING FLOWERS

2011-04-15T16:33:00.001+02:00

...

Lesser Celandine

Wood Anemone

Primrose

THE FATEFUL 1816 VOYAGE OF THE ESK

2011-04-14T23:25:00.002+02:00

William Scoresby

The 1816 voyage of the Esk to Spitzbergen under the command of Captain William Scoresby proved a most disastrous endeavour. As soon as the ship crossed into the arctic ice fields, a storm of such ferocity bore down on the vessel that Scoresby, a veteran of fourteen voyages, considered the hazardous situation the worst he had ever encountered. The storm lasted a full twelve hours, a prolonged period throughout which the crew must have felt in sickeningly close proximity to certain death and destruction.

After trying several times to free the Esk from the ever encroaching ice, which involved the intricate navigation of an unwieldy, cumbersome ship through narrow channels between drifting floes, on May 2nd open water was acheived.

Until June 19th the Esk was employed in the activity for which she was built, namely the hunting of whales. Although not the best season ever, a reasonable amount of 'fish' were caught. Things were going tolerably to plan, but in such an inhospitable environment nothing can be taken for granted.

In an attempt to avoid being crushed by two massive ice floes which were inexorably coming together, the Esk was steered towards an indentation in the ice. The thought was that, although it would be fairly tight, when the blocks of ice came together the indentation would prevent the Esk from being broken like a wallnut in a nutcracker.

Unfortunately, and unbeknown to the crew, a submerged projection of ice known as a tongue had done severe damage below the water. When the pressure of the opposed masses relaxed, the ship began to sink.

A distress signal was immediately sent out and assistance came from many of the ships busy in the area. One was the John of Greenock, commanded by Mr Jackson, Scoresby's brother-in-law. With the extra manpower available, pumps and buckets were put to constant use until the extent of the damage was ascertained.

Water was welling into the ship through a large hole due to a major section of the after keel being torn away. Emergency measures to save the Esk were discussed. Several plans were put forward. In the end it was decided to adopt the most extraordinary proposition of all.

The rigging was taken down and all portable stores and furniture were removed from the stricken ship and placed on the ice. Ropes were tied to the tops of the masts and heavy anchors were suspended from them to aid rotation of the ship. These ropes went under the hull of the vessel and onto the ice where they would be heaved upon by as many men as possible, the idea being to turn the Esk upside down in the water so the carpenter could then climb aboard the upturned hull and make good a repair

The attempt to capsize the arctic whaling ship the Esk by running ropes beneath her and using heavy anchors to assist in the manouvre. Click on the picture for a larger image.

With one hundred and fifty men pulling, the ship still refused to careen sufficiently and it was obvious that some extra persuasion was required. Scoresby duly went on board with one hundred and twenty men who lined up at the highest side of the tilted deck, and then ran en masse to the lower side in a vain attempt to suddenly move the ship in the water. Sadly all these endeavours failed and it was back to the drawing board.

In the end a plan to partition and seal off the injured part of the ship was hatched. This was carried out successfully and swiftly. The repair was tightly caulked to prevent leakage, and a 'thrumbed' sail - that is to say a sail studded with bunches of oakum and rope yarn - was applied to the hole externally. This was sucked into the leak by water pressure and served to partially choke the influx.

On July 6th 1816 the Esk set sail for home. The John remained with her to chaperone the limping vessel back to England. Because he had forgone any chance of success in the whale fishery through the unstinting assistance he'd given to Scoresby and his crew, Captain Jackson agreed a pact. He would take half of the cargo captured by the Esk prior to her near fatal accident.

On July 27th the Esk entered Whitby harbour with all but one of the crew she set out with, and all in a reasonable state of health. In the words of Captain William Scoresby...

The hearty congratulations I received on landing, from every acquaintance, were almost overwhelming, and these, with the enhanced endearments of my affectionate and enraptured wife, amply repaid me for all the toils and anxieties of mind that I had endured.

CIVIL WAR, ALUM AND THE DEMONIACKS

2011-04-09T16:22:00.013+02:00

Old Mulgrave Castle

Captain Zachary Steward was born in 1607. The Steward family owned the estate of Lofthouse in Yorkshire, now Loftus, Cleveland. His father was Dr Zachary Steward, Rector of Easington, Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge and Chaplain to the Archbishop of York. The Stewards of Loftus descended from the Stewards of Ely, Cambridgeshire, who claimed both the royal Stewarts and Oliver Cromwell among their relations. Dr Steward's second cousin, Elizabeth, was Cromwell's mother.

Captain Steward was in his mid-30s when the English Civil War (1642-1651) came to this corner of Yorkshire. A Royalist, he garrisoned Mulgrave Castle for Charles I and became governor of the ancient stronghold, the ruins of which can still be found deep within Mulgrave Woods, near Lythe. In July 1644, following the Battle of Marston Moor, Colonel Francis Boynton came north to reclaim the castle for Parliament. The rendition seems to have happened without bloodshed, an agreement having been made between the two sides. Captain Steward was allowed to ride out of the gates at the head of his men, drums beating, colours flying, having left all arms and ammunition behind. Mulgrave Castle was dismantled by Parliament in 1647, possibly by means of gunpowder, and has been in ruins ever since. Captain Steward had ensured his own house and lands at nearby Loftus were not forfeited. A condition of his freedom was an undertaking that he would be involved in no further hostility towards Parliament.

Steward subsequently made a great fortune through the discovery of alum on his land. He had founded, and owned, the profitable Loftus alum works. His only child, a daughter named Mary, married a Thomas Moore. Their son, Zachary Steward-Moore, inherited the Steward's vast wealth and lived in a large house sited where the supermarket now stands in Loftus Market Place. A flamboyant 18th century hell-raiser, Steward-Moore seems to have been a popular and fashionable man about town. He was a prominent member of the Demoniacks, the North Riding version of the Hell Fire Club. This secret society, founded in the 1740s by John "Crazy" Hall Stevenson, "indulged by night in heavy drinking and obscene jesting". The Demoniacks were based at Stevenson's home in the then rambling medieval castle at Skelton. It gained the name "Crazy Castle", no doubt their nocturnal activities hadn't gone unnoticed in the locality. A fellow Demoniack was Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, and it is quite possible that some of the characters in the novel were inspired by his friends at Skelton. The actor, David Garrick, was another visitor.

Old Skelton Castle

Zachary Steward-Moore was said to have shod his horses hooves with silver and kept company with those who, "assisted him in the laborious work of getting to the far end of a great fortune." John Hall Stevenson wrote the following verse about Moore in his "Crazy Tales":

"What sober heads hast thou made ache!

How many hast thou kept from nodding!

How many wise ones, for thy sake,

Have flown to thee, and left off plodding!

Philosophy and grace are thine,

Not spiritual grace but sprightly;

Inspired by the god of wine,

Inspired like old Anacreon nightly.

Whether thy grace from heaven descends,

Or rises from the earth below,

Oft hast thou raised thy helpless friends,

Oft given thy purse unto thy foe."

Inevitably, Zachary Steward-Moore squandered all his family's money. As his funds dwindled, so did the number of his friends. He saw out the rest of his days in relative modesty at Gibraltar when offered a Lieutenancy there by one of his more loyal former acquaintances.

PEAK ALUM WORKS

2011-04-03T12:58:00.003+02:00

The remains of The Old Alum Works at Ravenscar offer a glimpse into a lost industrial past peculiar to this part of the east coast. Indeed it could be seen as the birthplace of the British chemical industry. What made the development of this complicated process so astonishing is that the science of chemistry was still non-existant. Everything occured as a result of laborious trial and error.

Alum was first produced at Slapewath, Guisborough in 1604. In 1640 Sir Bryan Cooke discovered alum in the rocks at Peak, now more commonly known as Ravenscar. The Peak fault, a shift in the rock strata that occured 350 million years ago, left accessible Lias shales above sea level to the north of Ravenscar, an obvious advantage if you wanted to mine it without drowning.

Alum was used as a mordant for fixing dyes and in the leather industry to render hide supple and manageable. During the 19th century synthetic alum was produced and aniline dyes were invented that didn't require a mordant to fix them. The last alum works to close were those in Kettleness and Boulby in 1871. The industry had lasted for around 250 years.

The Old Alum Works, Ravenscar

Aluminium silicates and iron pyrites were both present in the Lias shales, a feature of the Yorkshire coast's local geology. To produce alum, the sulphur from the iron pyrites and the alumina from the aluminium silicates had to be combined in as pure a state as possible.

Alum shale was dug from two large quarries and burned in huge stacks on brushwood fires. The chemical reaction gave off its own heat, so more shale could be piled on until these smouldering mounds, called clamps, were sometimes as much as 20 metres high. They burned for a full nine months, after which the whole rock became red in colour.

The 'calcined' shale was then steeped in pits of water to extract aluminium sulphate. The liquor was run off into settling tanks and the remaining red rock, known as 'mine', was dumped either on or over the cliffs. These spoil heaps are now the preferred habitat of yellow flowered gorse bushes.

One of the stone drainage channels

The liquor was then boiled in a Boiling House in pans over iron plates. This part of the process relied on huge quantities of coal which was brought to the works by sea. A stone lined winding house which once contained the winching machine remains at Ravenscar, iron fittings and spindle wheels still intact. It was used to haul coal deliveries up the cliff, and to load the finished alum product onto ships in the dock below.

The next stage of the process was to introduce potassium and ammonia. Potassium was obtained by burning kelp seaweed in huge quantities and adding the resulting lees to the mixture. As for ammonia, stale human urine was shipped into the works in huge barrels. It was said that poor people's urine was better as it was not the product of such strong drink.

The Winding House

In the heyday of urine usage people put it out on their doorsteps in jars ready for collection, buckets stood on street corners and special urinals were built in cities for the purpose. It was shipped in from such places as Newcastle and London in barrels in lye boats.

When the potash and ammonia was added to the brew it was left to cool and alum crystals gradually formed. The liquor could be reboiled time and time again to maximize the yield.

The industry has left indelible scars on the local landscape. A burning floor on the cliff above Sandsend has left a large, desolate area of bare shale reminiscent of the lunar surface. Remains of stone breakwaters and berthing points can be seen at Saltwick Bay and in many places the entire profile of the cliffs has been changed by alum mining.

Peak alum works as it is today
(Click on the photo for a larger image)

The site is now owned by The National Trust and is free to visit. It is well signposted from the Cleveland Way.

MOUNTING BLOCK ON BACK ST. HILDA'S TERRACE

2011-03-17T11:43:00.002+01:00

I've been past loads of times and never noticed this mounting block near the Fire Station at the top of Back St. Hilda's Terrace. Maybe someone knows why it might be there rather than somewhere else?

Update: Chris Corner explains that Back St. Hilda's Terrace used to be lined with stables and carriage houses for the well off inhabitants of St. Hilda's Terrace itself. Being rather well fed and possibly a bit rotund, the residents would need all the help they could get to mount their horses.

St. Hilda's Terrace was originally known as New Buildings, and there seems to have been an attempt to change the name to King Street at some point. An inscription on number 14 gives a date of 1779. It is a row of 25 houses which display a considerable variation in size and layout.

WADE'S CAUSEWAY

2011-03-13T19:29:00.003+01:00

One damp, grey February morning I resolved to visit the ancient road over Wheeldale Moor, it seemed high time I did an item about this strange, enigmatic structure. Unfortunately I didn't have my hiking boots with me, they were in my wife's car boot, so although I was suitably attired for the prevailing drizzle, sadly I was poorly shod against the perils of sodden ground.

The course of the road, with Hunt House to the
north and Wheeldale Bridge to the south

After driving through Goathland from Whitby I turned onto the moor and took a left turn down Hunt House Road. Pulling up in a layby where the pathway marked 'Roman Road' leads off, I sat and had some lunch and a cup of flask tea. The mist was rolling in over the moorland horizon and the sky was an austere grey. Ideal weather for viewing ancient monuments.

The path led through a meadow and across a wooden bridge over a fast flowing stream, then a track continued up through a field at a moderate gradient. This is where my less than adequate footwear caused a bit of bother. It was very wet and slippery and by far the easiest way was to walk on the grass at the side of the track.

After a bit of mud skating and almost falling down several times, a gateway led out onto the edge of the moor. A notice board explaining the legend of Wade, a map of the road's route and a couple of diagramatic cross sections had been erected in a large puddle. Luckily some kind soul had placed a plank across the water so I balanced on it precariously and read the informative text. One of the illustrations showed Wade himself actually lifting a huge stone to build the road so his wife Bell could herd her sheep over the moorland pastures.

The first part of the Wheeldale road as it rises from Hunt House onto Wheeldale moor

The course of the road leading from here is made of sandstone slabs set amongst rough grass on a low embankment. Once these stones obviously formed the metalled surface layer. Stones are set on their sides along some parts of the edges of the road forming a kerb. A layer of gravel laid over the closely fitted sandstone slab metalling once formed the upper surface, and presumably the kerbstones helped to keep this in place, as well as preventing the sandstone slabs from sliding off their embankment.

It gently curves and rises before a wall crosses the road. From thenceforth the landscape changes to heather moorland and the road can be seen disappearing in the mist as it heads toward Wheeldale Bridge. Low clouds ominously rolling over the coniferous woodlands on the horizon and the remoteness of the location add to the overwhelming sense of mystery and wonder, because the construction of this ancient carriageway must have been a collossal undertaking.

In places where streams cross the route, the channels are bridged by stones from the road. Also it's quite clear that metalling slabs have been used in the building and repair of many nearby drystone walls.

Stones from the road used to bridge a stream

The work to expose the road as we see it now was undertaken by Mr James Patterson between 1912 and 1920 on behalf of the Office of Works. He found no pottery or coins during the course of his work. In fact the only relics he came across were human remains, described as a contracted skeleton, discovered in a small roadside burial cist made of slabs set on edge then covered by a large, flat stone. The remains found by Patterson and the coverstone to this cist have long since disappeared.

Although often called a Roman road, the actual date of construction has been the subject of much debate. In many ways it doesn't fit the typical profile of a Roman road. It has been suggested that it may even be part of a Neolithic boundary of some sort.

Over the heather towards Wheeldale Bridge

The following extract from a letter by Stockton based archaeologist Blaise Vyner published in British Archaeology, no 29, November 1997, serves to illustrate the lack of clarity about its origins, even amongst experts.

'I should like to comment on the 'road' across Wheeldale Moor, which you illustrated on the front cover. This structure is often referred to as one of the best surviving instances of unaltered, though robbed, Roman road construction. However, apart from being roughly on a line drawn between Cawthorn Roman camps and the Roman fortlet on Lease Rigg, it has none of the characteristics of a Roman road. It is restricted to Wheeldale Moor, and follows a sinuous course. It is also broken by watercourses. For some time I have suspected that this monument is in fact a Neolithic or Early Bronze Age boundary line'

As the ground became more and more sodden due to the constant drizzle, I decided that it was time to call it a day and retreat back to civilization. The purchase my relatively smooth soled shoes were obtaining on the slippery, lichen clad rocks, wet heather and couch grass was growing ever more tenuous. It would have only been a matter of time before I was face down in a peaty puddle with a mouthful of sphagnum moss.

Clearly I need to go up there again, but wearing more appropriate footwear and possibly another jumper. I would however feel somehow cheated if a warm sun was shining in the sky and bees were busy collecting pollen in the blooming heather. Ancient and mysterious monuments require a cloak of swirling mist and a penetrating wind that keeps everyone but the most intrepid visitors away.

Link to the full text of Blaise Vyner's letter

SCALEWORMS

2011-03-06T00:06:00.000+01:00

This large (4cm) scaleworm is probably a specimen of the species Harmothoe imbricata, although to identify thes creatures correctly it is necessary to use a hand lens and to examine the scales (elytra) in some detail.

Scaleworms are relatively common at Sandsend, Robin Hood's Bay and Kettleness etc. They cling to the underside of stones and can be easily missed. These photos were taken with the worms immersed in water, but when they're out of the water their colouration allows them to blend into the surface.

Harmothoe imbricata showing the two characteristic rows of fifteen scales (elytra), although the hindmost elytra on the right side is missing.

This second worm is probably another example of Harmothoe imbricata. At 2cm its much smaller and sports a completely different colour scheme. It has a rich chestnut coloured band down the centre and a white edge to each scale. Although it looks like poor camoflage, actually against corraline seaweeds and lichen, the pattern works well.

? Harmothoe imbricata wearing an alternative colour scheme

Breeding on our coast occurs during March and April. The females spawn twice during these months. Sperm are released onto the eggs which are held under the female's scales where early development takes place. Scaleworms can live for around four years.

Both were found at Sandsend on 25:02:11.

WHITBY IN FEBRUARY

2011-02-28T18:15:00.002+01:00

"Haunted Harry's"

C. Corner

WHITBY GINGERBREAD

2011-02-20T16:43:00.005+01:00

In the 1800s Whitby gingerbread was famous throughout the country with a reputation equal to that of York Muffins. Made from a stiff dough flavoured with coriander, peel and black treacle, it was consumed traditionally at Christmas. It was also recommended for new mothers, often together with cheese. In later versions of the recipe golden syrup replaced the treacle. A fruitied gingerbread was also available which included raisins, sultanas and currants in the mix.

A confectioner advertising gingerbread

Young estimated the amount sold in Whitby in one year to be around 12 tons. It was said that between September and December alone 5 tons were produced. It was dispatched far and wide in tea chests, often to ship's captains in distant lands whose crews longed for a taste of home.

Ditchburn's, who had a shop on Church Street, made Whitby gingerbread from 1868 until 1952. Beilby and Edwards' shop on St. Ann's Staith was right next door to Foster and Wright's confectioners. Both emporiums produced the spicy treat, so competition must have been fervent. Sometimes this traditional gingerbread is confused with peppercakes. These however were seasoned with Jamaican pepper.

Whilst the plain type was traditionaly made in a hoop and then decorated on top, the fruited variety was pressed into wooden moulds. These had patterns or pictures cut into them, often by skilled jet workers. Fourteen moulds are on display in Whitby Museum. They date from the 17th to the early 18th centuries and show such things as ladies and gentlemen in their finery, Whitby's coat of arms with its three ammonites and other delicately carved motifs.

Gingerbread moulds in Whitby Museum

Ellizabeth Botham's, craft bakers since 1865, still produce the delicacy today. This is their description of the product.

Original Whitby Gingerbread is a block gingerbread peculiar to the town and has been made here for many hundreds of years. It is quite unlike any other Gingerbread available as it is baked to a firm loaf with a texture between a bread and a biscuit. It is not a cake or a biscuit as many people would imagine.

This high quality product is delicious sliced thinly, buttered and eaten with a farmhouse cheese, such as Wensleydale or Coverdale and is also delightful with preserve.

Without doubt, a perfect speciality to be eaten on a crisp winter's day in front of a glowing fire.

Link: Botham's Whitby Gingerbread

WHITBY IN JANUARY

2011-01-30T15:45:00.004+01:00

C. Corner

THE WHALER FLEET

2011-01-23T02:23:00.018+01:00

By RICHARD LOCKER

The Whaler Fleet is a sentimental poem written by the Victorian gentleman Arthur J Munby. It recounts a tragic incident which occurs during a whaling voyage to Greenland and the frozen north, the story is told from the perspective of a loved one awaiting the return of the fleet.

THE WHALER FLEET

Full merrily sail’d our whaler fleet

When the wind blew out to sea;

Any many a one came forth to greet

Each good ship’s company.

For there was the Dove and the Good Intent

(How the wind blew out to sea!)

And the Polly o’ Sleights with her bran-new sails;

But the Mary Jane for me!

Oh, Captain Thwaites of the Mary Jane,

When the wind blew out to sea,

Full many a time his ship had sailed,

Full many a time had he.

He has Jack of Grosmont and Tom o’ the Staith

(How the wind blew out to sea!)

And Handsome Jim from Hayburn Wyke;

But ‘twas Robin Hood Will for me.

My Willy he kiss’d me before them all,

When the wind blew out to sea;

My Willy he stood the last on deck

A-waving a cap to me.

So off they sail’d out over the main,

While the wind blew out to sea;

Till the ice was all under their beamed bows

And the ice drove under their ice.

The months they went and the months they came,

And the wind blew out to sea;

Any many a time in the stormy nights

My mammy she wept with me.

But when the harvest moon came round,

And the wind blew in from the sea,

‘Twas merrily came our whaler fleet

All home from the north country.

The folk they call’d and the folk they ran,

And the wind blew in from the sea;

From the tick of the town to the lighthouse tower’

‘Twas throng as throng could be.

I saw them atop of the old church stairs,

When the wind blew in from the sea;

And the waves danced under their beamed bows,

And the foam flew under their lee.

I saw them at foot of the old church stairs,

When the wind blew in from the sea;

And the foremost ship of our whaler fleet

Was rounding the lighthouse quay.

Oh there’s the Dove and the Good Intent,

(Still the wind blew in from the sea),

And the red red sails of the Polly o’ Sleights-

Her men as plain to see.

Now every each hath pass’d the bar,

And the wind blew in from the sea;

And every each lies in harbour lies,

Right up against the quay.

But where, oh where, is the Mary Jane,

Now the wind blew in from the sea?

There’s many hath clipt his lass,

And when doth my lad clip me?

“Oh tell me where is the Mary Jane,

For the wind blew in from the sea?”

“The Mary Jane went down by her head

With all her company!”

And take me home, for I care not now

If the wind blows in from the sea;

My Willy he lies in the deeps of the dead,

But his heart lives on in me.

Arthur J Munby (1828-1910)

Munby was a relatively successful poet and had numerous pieces published in his lifetime, although he was only ever considered a minor writer of the Victorian era. It would only be after his death in 1910 when the true scale of his writings were revealed with his private diaries ‘Working Women In Victorian Britain 1850 - 1910’, a collection that ran to some 69 volumes in all.

These intimate diaries exposed Munby’s secret world and a life that was a far cry from the public demeanour he projected as an officious civil servant working at the Ecclesiastical Commissioners office. As the title suggests the diaries are an in-depth study of working class women from the Victorian era, but it is Munby’s idiosyncrasies which give the works a rather dubious reputation.

In them he describes how he would frequent the cities poor urban districts, where he could freely converse with these women, asking them about their lives, where they worked as well as the conditions they worked in. He would often make sketches of the women as well as writing detailed descriptions of their clothing and dialects. It is now considered that Munby may have had a form of mysophilia - a fetish for soiled and dirty materials or people - but he would vehemently deny that his ‘Hobby’ had any prurient elements.

Hannah Cullwick in various guises, including that of a housemaid, a lady and a male negro slave.

In 1854 Munby began an affair with a Shropshire born maid-of-all-work called Hannah Cullwick. The peculiarities of this relationship saw Munby take on the roll of master whilst Cullwick became his willing slave, they also involved other forms of fetishism including age play and infantilism. Even after their secret marriage in 1873 the relationship remained the same, apparently on Hannah’s behest. But by 1877 the couple had grown apart and Cullwick left Munby to return to her previous profession as a maid. It is thought Munby continued to visit Hannah right up until her death in 1909.

Although there is no evidence that Munby ever visited Whitby, the poem appears to suggest that he knew the town well, with it’s detailed description of the harbour and a familiarity with the names of the surrounding villages (Munby himself was born only forty miles away at Clifton in York). Plus the fact that Whitby at the time was one of England’s largest whaling ports and an industrious hive of activity, means the he would probably have found the town a very enticing destination.

WHY I LOVE BRYOZOANS

2011-01-23T02:23:00.012+01:00

Turning over stones in rockpools at low tide is a popular pursuit of holidaymakers, usually hoping to find a crab feverishly scuttling for cover under a mass of seaweed, or a small fish darting in the blink of an eye into some nook or cranny. If only they looked more closely at the rock itself, because some truly strange creatures can be found clinging to its surface.

Bryozoans are tiny colonial animals that live surrounded by a cuticle of resilient material, rather like the rooms in a block of flats. Usually less than a millimetre in length, each individual is known as a zooid. Sometimes the colonies form encrustations on rock surfaces ( hence they are sometimes known as sea mats ), but some species form branching structures often mistaken for seaweed.

Hornwrack: Flustra foliacea

A close-up of a frond of Hornwrack
...

The photographs above show Hornwrack. This is often cast up on the beach in large quantities after a rough sea. It looks for all the world like a piece of dried up seaweed, but it feels quite different. It has a rough, sandpaper-like surface. On closer examination the seperate compartments each bryozoan inhabits can clearly be seen.

A colony of Electra pilosa on a stone

Electra pilosa showing the oval zooecia

...

This encrusting bryozoan has more oval shaped compartments, or zooecia as they are correctly called, than hornwrack's rectangular ones. All the members of a colony are the progeny of a single individual known as the ancestrula. In its free swimming larval stage the ancestrula chooses a suitable surface on which to settlefor the remainder of its adult life. The growth of the colony occurs by budding.

It goes without saying that every stone that's turned over in any pool should be put back as near as possible into the same position as it was found. Each one is a tiny ecosystem. Rocky shores such as ours on the North Yorkshire coast support a multitude of fascinating and beautiful plants and animals, and they deserve our respect. They've been around a lot longer than we have. Fossil bryozoans are known from rocks 470 million years old. Humans emerged about 650,000 years ago.

SILVERING THE BABY

2011-01-23T02:23:00.008+01:00

My wife was speaking to someone at work recently who had just had a baby. She was disappointed to have delivered by caesarian section, because it meant she couldn't walk with the pram down Baxtergate collecting money, at least until the wound had healed a bit.

It seems that people, these days often old ladies, will put a coin into the hand of a newborn baby as it passes in the pram. It is meant to make sure that during its life the child shall never want for money. In Edinburgh it is known as 'silvering the baby' and often in the past a siver sixpence was used. Sometimes it was placed under the pillow or a blanket, possibly because it was less likely to be swallowed there.

Similarly a purse should never be given as a gift unless a coin is placed in it first, presumably ensuring it shall never be empty. In Scotland this is known as hanselling the purse. As long as the hansel was left in the purse, others would join it.

Also a knife should never be given without money being paid for it, traditionally the smallest coin of the realm. A promise that the knife would never be used against the giver, called by some 'blunting the knife'. Interestingly the Horngarth or Penny Hedge should rightly be made of sticks cut with a knife purchased for a penny.

Silvering the baby is still carried out in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. In England it seems to be restricted primarily to the north, although it has been reported from as far south as Surrey in the 1950s. Of course these days a 50p or £1 coin is the currency of choice. To a certain extent the connection between silver and babies has been commercialised. A quick look in a high street jeweller's will reveal silver piggy banks, silver spoons and other tacky trinkets.

At least the tradition still flourishes in Whitby. Indeed one mother came home with at least £50 from her first stroll out with the bairn. Still, mum's the word, eh?

WISHING CHAIR UPDATE

2011-01-23T02:22:00.000+01:00

As a supplementary detail to our previous post about the Wishing Chair on Stakesby Road, here is what English Heritage say about the site. It explains the shape of the chair and why it is situated at that particular point.

'Medieval cross base situated at the junction of Stakesby Road and Westbourne Road. It is the remains of a mile cross marking the approach to Whitby Abbey. It comprises a block of local sandstone 0.58m wide and 0.55m deep. There is an oblong depression, 0.34m by 0.25m and 0.24m deep cut into the top to serve as a socket. The N edge of the socket has broken away to form what looks like a chair. A modern cross commemorating the 1957 Festival of Britain has been set up on the opposite side of the road, this also marks the mile bounds of the Abbey. '

The cross commemorating the 1957 Festival of Britain

0°↓ 06:12:2010

2010-12-07T11:03:00.000+01:00

Photographs by Chris Corner

THE WISHING CHAIR

2010-12-05T10:35:00.001+01:00

Text and photos by RICHARD LOCKER

Take the Upgang road, leading past the West Cliff Station. After proceeding half a mile the first roadway, which narrows into a lane, is called ‘Love Lane’. It is a pleasant walk in dry weather, but generally dirty after a fall of rain. Immediately on emerging from the road, the Wishing Chair will be seen in front, being a rudely cut chair of stone. The popular belief is that those who, closing their eyes and divulging it to no one, ‘wish’ for any reasonable desire to be fulfilled, the same is sure to be gratified.

Excerpt taken from Horne’s Guide To Whitby (1904)

It has been over one hundred years since the Wishing Chair appeared in the Horne’s Guide To Whitby, but it is still possible to follow the exact route that the book describes and find this strange curiosity situated on the outskirts of town.

When seen in it’s current setting the stone chair seems at odds with it’s environment. Surrounded by the symbols of the modern world the chair seems lost as it is slowly encroached upon by various forms of ill conceived street furniture and the ubiquitous suburban convenience stores and petrol stations. But the stone remains resolute as it has for centuries, and the fact that it has survived this long makes it appear more than capable of lasting at least a few more centuries, hopefully relatively undisturbed.

FRESH DOWN

2010-11-28T14:16:00.001+01:00

Photos and video RICHARD LOCKER

Text from The Environment Agency Document 'Esk and Coastal Streams CFMP 43

The river sits within a steeply sided valley, with relatively narrow floodplains. Between Castleton and Lealholm, the River Esk flows within a 200-300m wide floodplain at the bottom of a steeply cut valley.

Downstream of Lealholm, the river valley narrows and the river is contained within narrow floodplains and gorges down to Sleights. From Sleights to Whitby, the floodplain progressively widens to a typical width of around 300m.

The topography of the Esk catchment is a significant factor in the magnitude and rate of catchment runoff. The steepness of the valley sides causes the rapid and sharply peaked floods characteristic of the Esk. The narrow river corridor with narrow floodplains means there is little attenuation of floods as they move through the valley.

BIRDSONG FROM DALBY FOREST

2010-11-21T19:38:00.001+01:00

Birdsong recorded from the edge of Dalby Forest one misty morning in September.

The chief chorister is a robin, although there are lots of contributions from other feathered singers and squawkers, and even a brief spell of bellowing from a huge bull who was making his voice heard from a nearby field.

Gill Catton posted this analysis on the Wild About Britain bird forum...

As well as the robin's gorgeous atmospheric singing there are two crows contact calling and a wren alarm calling (the rattling) which becomes two birds alarm calling. Obviously something's upset them. A great spotted woodpecker with a 'chip' call (01:10). Goldcrests with seeep seeep call (might be a treecreeper - they have a similar contact call). Then a wood pigeon comes in and a robin's alarm call can be heard (the tic tic itc call).

At 4:36 lots of swallow alarm calls.

Coal tit calls.(05:50 and just before). Then a chaffinch call (06:08) - some early on too but this one is clearest.

At least 2 if not 3 territorial robins.

DESIRE LINES

2010-11-09T00:38:00.008+01:00

BY RICHARD LOCKER

Footpath to Ruswarp

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard first coined the phrase ’Desire Lines’ in his 1958 book 'The Poetics of Space'. Expressed as 'a term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn’t designed but is rather worn away by people finding the shortest distance between two points'.

New Bridge, west side

It is considered that the perfect desire line is a well worn path that either runs parallel with an existing footpath or one that diverges from the said path only to intercept it later, usually shortening the length of the journey. It could be said that each one of the paths represents a subconscious desire to rally against the strictures of conformity and the town planners bludgeoning slide rule or maybe it’s the simple fact that it’s the most natural and obvious route from point A to point B.

New Bridge, east side

I have vague recollections that as a child I was seemingly able to navigate the whole town using these secretive and endless dusty highways, never actually having to set foot on tarmac or concrete at all. But it appears that over the years the majority of these paths have gradually vanished, either through dereliction of use or as sometimes occurs, the local authority has actually taken heed of the lumpenproletariat’s wilfulness, and turned the paths into legitimate rights of way, although it has to be said that these apparently random acts of assimilation do go some way to ruining the enigma of what these dusty old dirt tracks actually represent.

Two former desire lines, now public footpaths

THE LEGEND OF SALTERSGATE INN

2010-10-31T10:19:00.007+01:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

During the 1730s the Excise or Preventative Men were the scourge of the thriving smuggling trade around Whitby. In its position of isolation on one of the main roads into town, Saltersgate Inn, with an ex-sea captain as landlord, was the ideal place in which to conduct this nefarious business with relative immunity.

With an eagle eyed-lookout surveying the countryside for customs officials, alarm was usually raised in plenty of time to give the locals ample opportunity to hide the contraband and secrete the evidence of crime securely away. By the time the officers of law burst into the hostelry, to all intents and purposes it was a normal working pub. The landlord was serving ale, two men were deeply engaged in a game of cards, a dog slept by the fire and a drunk was mumbling to himself sprawled over a table in a corner. No one was ever caught.

One night, after the usual unsuccessful raid, the Excise Men hatched a plan to catch the reprobates red handed. One of them stayed behind and hid in a nearby farm outbuilding until the cogs and wheels of the secret trade began turning again inside the alehouse. Freezing cold and windswept, after an hour or so he stealthily crept to the entrance. Gathering all his moral fibre together he kicked open the door, brandished his gun at the throng and shouted "I am arresting you in the name of the King!"

Seemingly it was all over for the crew of felons caught squarely in the act. But unbeknown to the officer, one of the locals had nipped outside to answer a call of nature. He saw the Excise Man in the doorway on his return, and quickly felled him with a judiciously swung barstool to the head.

The Excise Man was stone dead. After debating the issue of how to cover up this murder of an official of the King, a plan was devised which involved burying his body beneath the fireplace. The slabs were lifted and the corpse was incarcerated beneath the hearth of Saltersgate Inn. The fire was always kept burning to make sure it was impossible to carry out a search there.

When the landlord died thirty years later it had become a tradition for the fire to always remain lit day and night. Legend decreed that if the fire ever went out the vengeful ghost of the Excise Man would haunt the inn and wreak rack and ruin on the pub.

Now, due to renovation work, the fire has indeed been extinguished. Unfortunately the money ran out and the inn is now a semi derelict shell, a sad phantom of its former self. Does the blame fall on economic circumstances, or possibly the malevolent spirit of the Excise Man returning from the dead to punish the living?

Search me !

NUTCRACK NIGHT

2010-10-25T19:57:00.029+02:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

In Whitby, upon the Eve of All Saints, it was customary for young suitors to practice strange divinations. The medium for one peculiar process of love prognostication was the nut. Couples would throw two hazelnuts into the fire. If they burned quietly together, then a harmonious marriage lay ahead. Exploding, popping nuts that ricochet around the room upon all hallows eve were considered an inauspicious omen.

WITCH WOOD

2010-10-23T00:10:00.006+02:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

The spells were in vain, the hag returned
To the green in sorrowful mood
Crying that witches have no power,
Where there is a rowan-tree wood.

From The Old Ballad of Laidley Wood

From the secluded back lanes and woods of the English countryside to the cities' municipal parks, the European Rowan Tree (Sorbus aucuparia) is a common sight throughout the British Isles. In fact it is such a familiar part of the landscape that it almost becomes inconspicuous, when compared to it’s grander cousins like the English Oak and the Sycamore. But the truth is that the humble Rowan tree has a remarkable story to tell.

The tree itself is referred to in numerous mythologies throughout history, the ancient Greeks believed the tree was created from the blood and feathers of an eagle sent to aid Hebe in her battle to regain the chalice of ambrosia. The Rowan that appears in Celtic mythology is often associated with druidic rituals, where as the Norse myths relate to the Rowan as been the creator of woman. The tree also constantly recurs in literature from the ancient sagas and poems of the Irish right through to contemporary stories like J R R Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings.

During the 16th century the emergence of a more puritanical Christian church forced the last residual enclaves of paganism to the periphery of society, where anyone that was deemed a follower of the old order was branded a practitioner of witchcraft and subjected to trails, torture and invariably executions. This meant that thousands of innocent people across the whole of Europe were put to death, simply because they put their faith in nature and an ancient knowledge that had been passed down through the generations.

What is testament to the iconic power of the Rowan tree that it was able to survive these events, but it was with a certain amount of irony that the defining symbol of paganism had to suffer the indignity of been turned into the very object that was need to protect a person from the supposed malevolent forces of magic. It seemed on an intuitive level there was still an awareness of the tree’s importance, but the old, true meaning had become distorted through this new indoctrination of the people.

The following extract is taken from ‘Forty Years In A Moorland Parish’ written by the Reverend Canon Atkinson in 1891, and is an account of the ritualised preparation and use of the Rowan as a charm against witchcraft.

To be effectual, the requisite piece of rowan tree,- for many were wanted; one for the upper sill of the house door, one for the corresponding position as to stable, cow byre and the other domiciles of the various stock, one for personal use, one for the head of the bed, one for the house place etc, etc, - must not only be cut on St. Helen’s day, but, in order to be quite fully efficacious, they must be cut with a household knife: they must be cut, moreover, from a tree which not only the cutter had never seen before, but of the very existence of which she must have no previous knowledge or suspicion; and that, on the tree having been found in this blindfold sort of way, and the requisite bough or boughs having been severed and secured, they must be carried home by any way save that by which the obtainer of them had gone forth on his quest.

It would appear that the remoteness of the surrounding moorland had a significant influence on these archaic rituals enduring far into 19th century. In places like Danby, Lealholm and Castleton the people still considered witches and witchcraft to be such a serious threat to their homes and livestock that ‘Witch Wood‘ was considered to be the only effective means of keeping these malign creatures at bay. In fact so prolific were these enchantresses that many of the villagers could name and identify them as well as where they were perceived to live.

BY RICHARD LOCKER

BROWNE BUSHELL

2010-10-23T00:09:00.003+02:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

Ruswarp Hall

The name Bussel (Bushell) has been recorded in the Whitby Strand Records since AD1200. They were a prosperous family with strong connections to the sea. During the reign of James I their success as merchants enabled the building of Ruswarp Hall by Nicholas Bushell, who already owned Bagdale Hall which he'd bought from the Conyer family in 1595.

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Nicholas Bushell married Dorothy, the daughter of Sir Henry Cholmley of Rooksby. On May 17th, 1609 a son named Browne Bushell was born. The question over his exact birthplace still remains, although it seems more likely he first saw the light of day in Bagdale, Whitby rather than Ruswarp Hall.

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In 1633 Captain Browne Bushell married the daughter of Cromwell's Chief of Staff, Thomas Fairfax, who owned alum works at Dunsley. The couple made Bagdale their marital home.

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Bagdale Old Hall

The English Civil War regularly saw men change allegience from the Parliamentarians to the Royalists (and indeed vice versa) at the drop of a hat, often depending on who had the upper hand at the time. Browne Bushell however was in a class of his own.

He was serving in the garrison under Hugh Cholmley in 1643, concerned with holding Scarborough Castle for Parliament. However Cholmley suddenly decided to hand the castle over to the Queen in March of that year, thus turning his back on Cromwell. Before doing so, he sent Bushell away on an errand to Hull, but he was captured and imprisoned by his cousin John Hotham, the Govenor of the city. He was held for two days, and only released after promising to recapture Scarborough Castle again for the Roundheads.

Bushell arrived back at the castle to find Cholmley had gone to York where the Queen was staying for a time. The soldiers at Scarborough were very dissatisfied and angry with the manner of Cholmley's feeble surrender, so Bushell and his brother Henry had little trouble in retaking the castle for Parliament in a totally bloodless coup.
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Browne Bushell in Scarborough Art Gallery

It wasn't long before Browne Bushell fancied a change and started negotiations with the Royalists. He handed the castle back to them in due course. On April 19th, 1645 Sir Thomas Fairfax, his own father-in-law had him taken to London to be court-martialed.

Somehow Browne Bushell managed to convince his accusers of his wholehearted support for the Parliamentarian cause, because he was given the command of a fine ship under Admiral Sir William Batten. He couldn't stick with it though, and in 1648 he and several other ships captains delivered their vessels to the Prince of Wales.
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Two men duly apprehended the turncoat, getting a reward of £20 for their troubles, and he was thrown in prison. On March 29th, 1651, with Cromwell having displaced Charles I, Bushell was condemned and executed having spent the final three years of his treacherous life in prison.
............. In 1916 two dismembered paintings were found in the box room at Bagdale Old Hall. They were duly sent to London for restoration and returned to the hall in something akin to their former glory. They were portraits made directly onto wooden panels, probably by some unknown itinerant italian artist. One was of Browne Bushell aged 24, the other depicted Dorothy, his bride aged 19. They were dated 1633. Each sitter is wearing a betrothal ring on a chain round their necks.........................

Some would say the turncoat Bushell has never left the hall. His ghost has been seen on more than one occasion among the upper rooms. Some say he is fated to return every year on the anniversary of his execution. Maybe the footfalls people hear outside their rooms, as if someone is passing in the dead of night, are those of the wretched Browne Bushell. It seems even after his spirit is meant to have left this mortal realm, he still can't decide which side to be on.

BURIED CHIMES

2010-10-23T00:08:00.007+02:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

THE BURIED CHIMES

Under the cliffs at Whitby, when the great tides landward flow,
Under the cliffs at Whitby, when the great winds landward blow,
When the long billows heavily roll o’er the harbour bar,
And the blue waves flash to silver ‘mid the seaweeds on the Scar,
When the low thunder of the surf calls down the hollow shore,
And ‘mid the caves of Kettleness the baffled breakers roar.
Under the cliffs at Whitby, whoso will stand alone
Where, in the shadow of the Nab, the eddies swirl and moan,
When, to the pulses of the deep, the flood-tide rising swells,
Will hear, amid it’s monotone, the clash of hidden bells.

Up from the heart of the ocean the mellow music peals,
Where the sunlight makes it’s golden path, and the sea-mew flits and wheels,
For many a chequered century, untired by flying time,
The bells, no human fingers touch, have rung their hidden chime.
Since the gallant ship that brought them, for the abbey on the height,
Struck and foundered in the offing, with her sacred goal in sight.

And the man who dares on Hallowe’en on the Black Nab to watch,
Till the rose-light on St. Hilda’s shrine the midnight moonbeams catch,
And calls his sweetheart by her name, as, o’er the sleeping seas,
The echo of the buried bells comes floating on the breeze,
‘Ere another moon on Hallowe’en her eerie rays has shed,
Will hear his wedding peal ring out from the church-tower on the Head.

S K Phillips

A rare recording of the sunken chime

The poem by Miss S K Phillips is just one version of an old Whitby legend concerning the loss of the Abbey bell. Another more likely story tells of Henry VIII’s men removing the bells during the Dissolution in 1539 and placing them on a ship bound for London. But it is said that as the vessel left the safety of the harbour, it foundered in the open sea and sank without trace, probably due to the weight of the bells on board.

The final and more commonly known version is the tale of a villainous sea captain who put to shore at Whitby one night and stole the bells from the Abbey‘s tower. With the heavy load eventually on board, the ship made good it’s escape, but once at sea the captain found that he was unable steer his vessel. The combined force of wind and waves together with the weight of the bells rendered his ship uncontrollable and it was dashed upon the rocks at the Black Nab.

WITCH POSTS

2010-10-23T00:07:00.003+02:00

OUT ON YE! HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

There has only ever been one witch post found outside the North Yorkshire Moors, and that was from Rawtenstall in Lancashire. They were always made of oak and built into the structure of the house as a support for the smokehood above the inglenook fireplace.

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The posts were carved at the top with varying degrees of complexity, but all the designs included at least one X shaped cross. Often there were one or more rolls fashioned beneath it. A witch post from from Postgate Farm, Glaisdale has the date 1664 carved into it, together with the letters EPIB.

Witch posts: 1 From Danby. 2 From an old house near Scarborough. 3 Postgate Farm, Glaisdale. 4. In Stang End at the Rydale Folk Museum. 5 Low Bell End, Rosedale. 6 Gillamoor. 7 Quarry Farm, Glaisdale.

There is one on display in Whitby Museum from East End Cottage, Egton. An example of one performing its supporting role by the fireside can be seen in The Rydale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole. The whole of the Stang End house at Danby was painstakingly transplanted there complete with the mysterious and cryptic witch post.

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No folk tradition exists to cast light on their actual meaning, and it is only during the twentieth century that they have become known as witch posts. It was assumed that the carvings provided the household with protection against dark forces in those days of superstition and dread. Some suggest the X is a solar symbol, as widely used in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The witch post in Whitby Museum

In earlier times they were often referred to as priest posts. Some claim travelling priests on blessing a house, would make a mark to confirm their holy work. The famous priest Nicholas Postgate was working in this area at the time. One idea is that they indicate a room where Catholic Mass could be safely performed.

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The posts remain as relics of a lost tradition, their meaning and their secret symbolism a reminder of how the moors are laced with mysteries that still remain out of reach to our modern consciousness.

KETTLENESS MONSTER

2010-10-05T20:10:00.005+02:00

Exclusive Out on Ye! footage of a mysterious sea beast sighted off Whitby.

DALBY FOREST FUNGI

2010-09-23T16:25:00.008+02:00

With Summer giving way to Autumn, even a short walk in any forest or wood can turn up any number of interesting fungi. They live in the earth all year round as a network of fibres called a mycelium, completely out of sight keeping quietly to themselves. However, when they need to reproduce, large fruiting bodies appear above ground and begin to develop spores. These are the mushrooms and toadstools we're so familiar with.

Here are a few found in Dalby Forest during a damp day in mid September.

Sulphur Tuft

Hypholona fasiculare

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Fairly common in the forest, growing on the stumps of all kinds of trees. The smooth young caps are a beautiful sulphur yellow. Older caps are darker at the centre with a paler margin. Not poisonous, but horribly bitter with a taste like quinine.

The Sickener

Russula emetica

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As the name suggests, if eaten the acrid flesh of this fungus can make the unfortunate victim extremely sick. The cherry red cap is shiny and somewhat sticky when wet and is easily broken if handled. The thin skin is quite peelable and often damaged. Found under conifers, frequently in a bed of moss.

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Clustered Tough Shank

Collybia confluens

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The slender, hollow stems of the Clustered Tough Shank are darker than the caps and covered with a fine grey-white down. They grow in dense clumps with many stems arising from the same base, giving the characteristic clustered appearance. Usually in beech leaf litter but also associated with other broad leaved trees.

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Click on the individual pictures to enlarge them for a better fungus viewing experience.

THE BARD OF THE DALES

2010-09-18T23:23:00.008+02:00

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Irishman Patrick Castlehowe's marriage to Mary Bonas, the daughter of a Lealholm paper mill worker, is recorded in the Danby Church Registry. Soon after the wedding the couple moved to Ireland for a period of time, during which their son John was born. The year was 1792.
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When he was two or three years old, the family moved back to Lealholm. At twelve years old John went to work in Lincolnshire as a gentleman's servant. After a couple of years he was back in Lealholm and gained employment in the 'mystery and trade' of a journeyman mason, a career he pursued for the rest of his working life.
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John became known for his skill as a poet and songwriter, often with a hatful of scraps of paper on which he jotted ideas as they came to him. He was fond of music, particularly the fiddle and the flute. Due to the phonetic spelling often found in old records, his name became Castilo from his father's original Castlehowe.
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His first book of poems entitled 'The Bard of the Dales - Poems by John Castillo' was very popular, with its easy to follow simple rhyming and its portrayal of local events and characters. Many of the pieces were written in local dialect. Around 1819 he converted from his father's Catholicism to Methodism, which was becoming increasingly popular in the dales.
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This lost him many friends and had an effect on his poetical output. His general outlook on life became increasingly puritanical, indeed Castillo became a successful and original local preacher among the Wesleyans for several years.
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In later life John moved to Pickering and died on April 16th, 1845 aged 53. He is buried in the Wesleyan Burial Ground there.
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Castillo's old house is now Poet's Cottage Shrub Nursery, Lealholm.

His most famous dialect poem 'Awd Isaac' is thought to be about Isaac Hobb who lived near Glaisdale Church.

Links:

Awd Isaac, The Steeple Chase and Other Poems; with a Glossary of the Yorkshire Dialect

TheBard of the Dales

MARCEL ZILLESSEN

2010-09-15T23:08:00.007+02:00

BY RICHARD LOCKER

The Zillessen's guest house, Robin Hood's Bay

In 1970 a new family moved to Robin Hood’s Bay. Quietly assuming the role of guest house proprietor, Mr Zillessen settled down to enjoy semi-retirement and the gentle life the village offered. But this seemingly ordinary man harboured a secret, one which would have been known to millions of movie fans. He was in fact one of the brave prisoners responsible for organising the mass breakout at Stalag Luft III during the Second World War, an event immortalised in the 1963 movie The Great Escape.

Marcel Zillessen was born in Northampton in 1917 to a German father and Irish mother. His father, a successful businessman, would eventually relocate his family north to the small village of Eldwick, a move which enabled him to spend more time managing the family’s textile business in the nearby city of Bradford.

As a young man Marcel was given the position of Sales Director within the family business. To further his son’s education his father decided to send him to Berlin where he would study at the city’s university. It was during his stay in Berlin that Marcel became fluent in Berlinese, the language of the city’s high society. He would also witness first hand the rise of Hitler and National Socialism, an event that was to have a consolidating effect on the young man’s mind.

At the outbreak of war Marcel was approached by the British government with the intention of recruiting him as a spy, but Marcel declined claiming that subterfuge seemed to devious and that he wanted to confront the enemy ’face to face’.

Finally he opted to join the RAF where he became a Hurricane fighter pilot for number six squadron. Responsible for flying ’tank busting’ raids against Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Marcel was involved in numerous sorties, until eventually his luck ran out. On 6th April 1943 he was shot down and captured near Wadi Akarit in Tunisia.

A watch tower at Stalag Luft III

After been interrogated in Italy Marcel was transferred to the prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III in Sangen, Germany. Upon his arrival he was indoctrinated into the camp’s ideology of the ‘duty of escape‘. The escape executive committee instantly saw the potential in Zillessen and put him to work liaising with the camp authority. The fact that he was know to have spent some time in the upper echelons of German society meant that the German officers in the camp tasked him with writing long, eloquent love letters home to their wives and girlfriends.

Once ingratiated with the camp authority Marcel set about procuring pens, ink and stationary, which were then put to use forging the necessary documents and passports needed for a successful escape.

The escape took place on the night of the 24th March 1944. In all two hundred men gathered in hut 104 and prepared themselves for the breakout.
This is Marcel Zillessen’s account of the occasion.

"Everything went wrong that night, there was an air raid and all the lights went out in the tunnel, and then a Major got stuck and it took ages to get him out.

I cannot describe what it was like when it finally broke. The German were absolutely livid, there were dogs rushing around the camp and guards were pouring in from all over the place.

There was still 150 PoWs left in the hut at the time we heard shots being fired. People came pouring down the tunnel telling everybody, ‘it’s all over‘.

Once I realised that the escape had broken I just leapt out of the hut. I ran as fast as I could and jumped through the window into my own room."

An ariel photograph of Stalag Luft III. The exit of one of the escape tunnels can be seen as a light area outside the perimeter fence indicated by an arrow.

Of the 76 men that escaped that night, only 3 managed to make it back to the UK, 23 were re-captured and returned to camp and the rest, fifty men in all, were executed by the Gestapo.

After the war Marcel returned to the family business in Bradford. In 1951 he married his Bradford born wife Lyn. Later moving to Darlington, Co Durham he became involved in the wool trade. Whilst in the North-East Marcel also set up a chain of fast food outlets using the Zillessen name.

After leading this extraordinary life Marcel finally settled in Robin Hood’s Bay where he unassumingly spent the next thirty years of his life quietly running a guest house. Marcel Zillessen died on the 8th January 1999 aged 81.

Henley The Scrounger, James Garner's character in the 1963 film The Great Escape was based on Marcel Zillessen.

Links:

Obituary

The Great Escape: Tunnel To Freedom

GEORGE WOOD'S PENNY JET WORKS

2010-09-01T00:18:00.007+02:00

In 1889 this magnificent working model of jetworkers was made by George Wood. A penny placed in the slot set the wheels spinning and the foreman's head would turn periodically as if to keep an eye on his employees. They wore clothes cleverly fashioned from real fabric, and it is said that their faces were caricatures of actual Whitby jetworkers.

The heads were carved from clay pipes and all wear hats as was the custom of the day. There are eight figures, each performing a different task involved in the preparation of jet jewellery.

Each worker has a caption detailing the nature of his job. The foreman is Chopping Out the raw jet, then the rest of the team are labelled as Turning, Brushing, Rougeing (which involved using red iron oxide), Polishing, Milling and Grinding.

When first completed the model was displayed in the window of the Whitby Gazette office in Bridge Street. An advertisement of August 1909 reads 'Visitors wishing to see the various stages in the manufacture of jet ornaments should see the large automatic penny-in-the-slot model outside the premises of J. H. Hodgman, 151, Church Street.'

Later it was moved to the shop of Elisha Walker at 97, Church Street, which is situated at the bottom of Blackburn's Yard. In her book Whitby Jet Through The Years, Mabel McMillan, recalls as a child fetching the key from the shop on a Saturday morning and unlocking the door in the machine, removing the cocoa tin in which the pennies were collected and carefully counting the week's takings.

George Wood's superb model is now on display at Whitby Museum in Pannett Park.

WHITSUN: SYLVIA PLATH

2010-08-25T23:00:00.012+02:00

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Whitsun

This is not what I meant:
Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows,
Bald eyes or petrified eggs,
Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets,
Lard-pale, sipping the thin
Air like a medicine.

The stopped horse on his chromium pole
Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze.
Your shirt of crisp linen
Bloats like a spinnaker. Hat brims
Deflect the watery dazzle; the people idle
As if in hospital.

I can smell the salt, all right.
At our feet, the weed-moustachioed sea
Exhibits its glaucous silks,
Bowing and truckling like an old-school oriental.
You're no happier than I about it.
A policeman points out a vacant cliff

Green as a pool table, where cabbage butterflies
Peel off to sea as gulls do,
And we picnic in the death-stench of a hawthorn.
The waves pulse like hearts.
Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie
Sea-sick and fever-dry.

Sylvia Plath

The American poet and authoress Sylvia Plath visited Whitby with her husband Ted Hughes in the August of 1960. The following passage is taken from the biography ‘Sylvia Plath - A Literary Life’ by Linda Wagner-Martin :-

As if Plath was charting the reason for her unease, her depression and illness, she writes about a brief trip she and Ted, with Frieda, took with Ted’s cousin Vicky to the beach.
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‘Whitsun’ recounts the disappointment of the holiday in Whitby; the poem opens, ‘This is not what I meant.’ Picnicking ’in the death stench of a Hawthorn,’ she notes that her spouse is ‘no happier than I about it.’ The poem concludes with the image of two vacationers lying together ’seasick and fever dry.’

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Plath’s description in a letter to her mother reinforces the mood of the poem: ’There is something depressingly mucky about English sea side resorts. Of course, the weather is hardly ever sheer fair, so most people are in woollen suits and coats and tinted plastic raincoats. The sand is muddy and dirty. The working class is also dirty, strewing candy paper, gum and cigarette wrappers.’

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In contrast to her assessment of their holiday, she lamented in the following paragraph, ’My favourite beach in the world is Nauset, and my heart aches for it. I don’t know, but there is something clean about New England sand, no matter how crowded.’

Plath’s visit also inspired her to write a short story - using an idea that was sketched out in her ’Letters Home’ - entitled ’The Perfect Place’, also known as ‘The Lucky Stone‘ the piece would eventually appear an issue of the magazine ’My Weekly’ on the 28th October 1961.

It was said the ’The Perfect Place’ was one of the last short stories, if not the last story, Plath completed prior to writing ’The Bell Jar’. The similarities between the two works are so strong, that the story - it’s characters, episodes and themes - appear to be a blueprint for the novel. - Peter K Steinberg

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RICHARD LOCKER

VESICA PISCIS

2010-07-28T22:58:00.008+02:00

The Church of St. John the Evangelist stands at the bottom of Brunswick Street, Whitby. Built in 1848-50 in Early English style as a chapel of ease for St. Mary's. It later became a district church within the parish of Whitby.

Either side of the entrance to the church which opens onto Brunswick Street, in a pair of gables, high up and slightly set back, can be seen two unusual windows. Their shape is known variously as the vesica piscis or mandorla. It is highly symbolically significant .

The vesica piscis (literally 'fish bladder') is derived from the intersection of two circles signifying the overlap between the divine and the worldly. Turned on its side it becomes the Christian fish symbol or Ichthus often seen emblazoned on modern cars.

An alternative name for the vesica piscis is the mandorla, the Italian word for almond. In a pre-christian ancient Turkish legend the god Attis was born to a virgin mother named Nana. She conceived by placing an almond between her breasts. The nut or seed is a clear indicator of the potential for new life, and the shape also suggests the female genitalia.

In art it is known as an aureole. A kind of halo encompassing the whole body. Many depictions of Christ show him within a mandorla, showing simultaneously the fact that he bridges the gap between the earthly and the heavenly, and that he was the fruit of a virgin womb.

As with so many buildings in Whitby, there's a lot more to enjoy if you cast your eyes heavenwards.

WHITBY SMUGGLERS

2010-07-28T00:23:00.019+02:00

Watch the wall…..while the gentlemen go by. (Rudyard Kipling)

Yesterday se’nnight The Fawn, smuggling lugger, with a thousand ankers of rum, brandy and geneva, to the amount of 6000 gallons, was taken and sent into Whitby, by the Eagle cutter, Captain George Whitegead, in the service of the revenue of that port; with the assistance of the Mermaid, Captain Carr. The Fawn is a fine clinch built vessel of 90 tonnes built at Flushing four months since, mounting six four pounders and six swivels. Her crew consisted of twenty two men. The Whitby Times, 31st August 1790

Britain’s varied coastline has a long history of accommodating the enigmatic figure of the smuggler and his illicit trade. History shows that the golden age of smuggling began in the 18th century and continued on into the early part of the 19th century. The probable cause of this proliferation was the introduction of a new tax called excise, which combined with the already existing customs tax was used by consecutive governments as a means to fund the spiralling costs of Britain’s wars in Europe.

Hidden away in the remote recesses of the North Yorkshire coastline, Whitby with it’s cosseted natural harbour and dark labyrinthine network of Ghauts, Ginnels and Yards seemed perfectly placed to play an active part in these acts of ’free trade’. And with rumours of an underground tunnel system existing beneath the town, the profiteers would easily have been able to secure their ill gotten gains safely, away from the prying eyes of the government’s ’Preventative Men’.

The romantic image of the smuggler as free spirited opportunist belong solely within the confines novels and fictionalised accounts. The truth of the matter was that at sometime or other the majority of the population found in sea side towns up and down the country, would have been involved in or at least benefited from this illegal trade. From the fishermen who used their boats to ferry the cargo to shore to the farm labourer who would then lug the smuggled items inland.

In Whitby, when a cart laden with smuggled kegs crossed the moors, it was usual to have one keg at the back of the cart ’ with a quill in it’, and passers-by were cordially invited to sample the contents of the keg, a convenient method of persuading them to keep their mouths shut. When the cart approached it’s final destination, the quill was withdrawn and the keg properly spiked. Extract taken from ‘Whitby Lore and Legend’ By Shaw Jeffrey

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Even the men sent to stop these illicit actives could find themselves embroiled in the trade:-

Captain Harold Hutchinson of the Dragoon Guards based in Guisborough was called out to attend what turned out to be a riot of a battle on Whitby’s quayside in the late 1700’s. The Dragoons after quelling the disturbance ended up being ordered to stay in Whitby for three years, enforcing the law as much as they could.

Captain Hutchinson was quickly made Customs Officer, and, as the story goes, managed to avail himself of certain items of contraband before they were spirited away for ’trade’. Such was the extent of his dealings; he amassed not inconsiderable wealth and was able to afford to build a fine dwelling in Skinner Street which became know as 'Harold Mansion'. It is said that success breeds success. Captain Hutchinson knew how to manipulate such a virtue.

As time went on, he turned his mansion into a bordello that was frequently patronised by visiting seamen, servicing a trade that built wealth on wealth for the Captain. Extract taken from the BBC North Yorkshire website

The bordello

It also seems that the people of Whitby had no problem with dispelling the myth of the archetypal smuggler as the following extract shows:-

We are told that during the absence of the men folk at the whale fishery their women kept the home kegs running, and they showed considerable ingenuity in their methods. It was usual for them to fasten a stout leather belt round their waists, under their garments and ’ next their shifts’, and to this belt were hung, all round, bladders of gin or brandy. Extract taken from Whitby Lore and Legend’ By Shaw Jeffrey

In all, the sea port of Whitby during the 18th century was a busy and successful centre of trade, and it seems quite possible that the illegal trafficking of goods played no small part in the town's prosperity, as it was something that any able seafarer could easily turn his hand to with what seemed a very good chance of success.

Text and photographs by RICHARD LOCKER

CRUMBLING CLIFFS

2010-07-25T20:37:00.037+02:00

The view of Whitby from the West Cliff, looking east across the harbour towards the Abbey, must be one of the most well-known and iconic images of the town. One that is reproduced on countless postcards and tea towels. Erosion has been relentlessly nibbling away at the Yorkshire coastline ever since the ice retreated from our shores after the last glacial period.

The image, below, is an impression of how I imagine Whitby might have appeared in the 1070s, just after William the Conqueror's devastating "Harrying of the North" in the winter of 1069-70, but before the restoration of the Abbey by the repentant Norman soldier-turned-monk, Reinfrid.

The Domesday survey was undertaken by the Norman Conquerors to provide proof of rights to land and obligations to tax and military service. It would establish who held what. Whitby's estimated taxable value at the time of the Domesday survey of 1085-86 was 60 shillings. In the years before 1066 Whitby was a thriving town with a taxable value of £112.

The Harrying was an attempt to subdue the rebellious Anglo-Scandinavian population once and for all, essentially an early application of "scorched earth" that King William was said to have regretted on his deathbed. Their intent was to leave the Anglo-Danish insurgents with no means of support, shelter, tools, crops or livestock, thus preparing the way for complete Norman control of the whole of England.

The Domesday entries, describing post-Conquest Yorkshire, make grim reading and are evidence of the effectiveness of the Norman tactics. Nearly all the familiar old villages in the Whitby area are described as "waste", a term meaning no one was productively working the land. Fields lay fallow and churches fell into disrepair. Whitby had a small surviving population and held on to existence but was still described as "almost all waste" in the Domesday Book.

The 11th and 12th century chronicler, Oderic Vitalis, wrote:

"The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies. He cut down many people and destroyed homes and land. Nowhere else had he shown such cruelty.
To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of hunger. I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him."

The amount of coastal erosion that has occurred since the building of the East Pier in the 18th century was used as a guide to roughly estimate how much land has been lost in 940 years. When the East Pier was built there was no gap between the Haggerlythe and the pier.

Recent archaeological work on the Abbey Headland has shown that Anglian Whitby was a much larger settlement than previously thought, with houses and workshops covering the entire headland at various times. It is believed the settlement extended far beyond the present cliff edge. Whitby might once have had a Roman signal station like the ones at Filey, Scarborough, Ravenscar, Goldsborough and Huntcliffe. The site of the signal station at Whitby has never been found and has probably fallen into the sea many centuries ago.

Whitby, July 2010

Whitby in the 1070s?

C. Corner

KETTLENESS MYSTERY CARVINGS

2010-07-20T00:16:00.003+02:00

This large stone lies in sand at the foot of the cliff at Kettleness. All along its spine it has carvings of South Seas style faces. When, why and by whom remains a mystery.

The colour and exposure of the images has been altered to bring out the characteristics of the carvings.

COMMON GREY SEA SLUG

2010-07-19T23:10:00.011+02:00

The eggs of Aeolidia papillosa

...

Last summer I was surprised to discover the eggs of the Common Grey Sea Slug (Aeolidia papillosa) under a stone at Sandsend. This year on the 2nd of July I scrambled down the cliff at Kettleness for a spot of rockpooling in the beautiful pools there on a baking Summer's day.

Once again, under a stone on the middle shore was an example of one of the characteristically spiral shaped egg masses of this fascinating creature. Normally living in much deeper water, these sea slugs come up the shore every year in July and August to spawn.

This time, under another rock I was lucky enough to find one of these elusive, beautiful sea slugs. It was only partially covered with water in its original position, but once placed on a flat stone in a clear pool it could be seen in all its glory.

Aeolidia papillosa

They feed on sea anemones and can actually use the undischarged stinging cells (nematocysts) of the anemones they've eaten. The stinging cells pass undigested into the tips of the projections, known as cerata, that cover the surface of the sea slug helping to protect it from predators. An effective defence mechanism is vital in a creature whose shell has been lost through evolution

Although known as the Common Grey Sea Slug, the colour of the animals vary according to their local food supply, in this case the red sea anenomes on which it feeds have given it a rosy tinge. They can grow to 120mm in length, although this specimen is much smaller.

Against a £1 coin as a size comparison

THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY

2010-07-11T13:33:00.007+02:00

Written and illustrated by Richard Locker
...

The Prospect Of Whitby is thought to be the oldest surviving public house in London, it can be found to the east of the city centre on the banks of the river Thames at Wapping. Situated within the borough of Tower Hamlets and surrounded by the infamous London Docklands, the pub has what could be considered a long and colourful history.

First built around 1520 during the reign of Henry VIII, the pub’s official name was ’The Pelican’, but as the river commerce increased a more transient population appeared tarnishing the riverside tavern with a dubious reputation. Finding itself host to a nefarious clientele made up of sailors, smugglers, prostitutes, cut throats and footpads the pub would eventually be re-christened the ‘Devils Tavern’ in their honour.

The Prospect of Whitby circa 1890

Perhaps the most villainous of the pub’s patrons was the 17th century nobleman ‘Hanging’ Judge Jeffreys. Known as the scourge of the Monmouth Rebellion, he was responsible for the putting to death of over 320 rebel supporters and sentencing a further 800 for transportation to the West Indies.

It was said that the Judge’s visits to the Devil’s Tavern would usually coincide with the hanging of local criminals at Execution Dock. He also enjoyed watching terrified felons being tied to posts on the river bank and left there whilst several tides washed over them. The scene is made all the more macabre by the fact that he was probably the very judge involved in sentencing these people to death.

Hanging Judge Jeffreys

Not all the pub’s customers were monsters, the famous writer and diarist Samuel Pepys was known to have frequented the establishment, although this was probably for no other reason than to carry out his numerous extra marital affairs in what he might have considered relative secrecy. He would often recount these infidelities in his diaries, as well as making several remarks about disturbances caused by the sailors in the Wapping area.

In 1777, after the Devil’s Tavern had been rebuilt because of damage sustained during a devastating fire, the landlord decided to rename the inn ’The Prospect Of Whitby’ after a square rigged collier called ‘The Prospect’. Built and registered in Whitby, the ship would often be found moored up outside the tavern after delivering it’s intended shipment of coal from the North-Eastern coal fields of County Durham and Newcastle.

In fact the ship became so much of a landmark, that the local people began referring to the pub as ’the one by the Prospect Of Whitby’. So like the Devil’s Tavern before it the name remained, right up until the present day where it is still possible to venture down to the banks of the Thames and buy yourself a pint in what is still considered to be the oldest pub in London.

A victim of The Judge

SAND SHOES

2010-06-24T12:02:00.005+02:00

20:06:10

Abandoned shoes created by artist Viv Mousdell examining the mutability of sand and time in an installation by the beach huts , Whitby.

'Even castles made from sand fall to the ocean'

Jimi Hendrix

...

Simon Verhoef populates the beach with phantom footwear. Their advance and reclaimation by the sea is being documented with time lapse photography.

Links:

sands of time art installation

viv mousdell

CAPTAIN SLEET

2010-06-19T15:00:00.017+02:00

BY RICHARD LOCKER

...

Herman Melville

'There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea, by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror.'
From The Mast Head , chapter 35 of the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

An extract from Moby Dick relating to Captain Sleet

...

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is considered to be a masterpiece of modern literature, written in a distinctly modernist style, it uses symbolism and metaphor to tell what appears to be a simple story of a young mariner called Ishmael and his adventures aboard the Pequod, a whaling ship captained by the tyrannical Ahab.

The book itself is epic in scale encompassing a vast array of themes, including Melville’s personal beliefs on the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, man’s place in the natural order of things, religion and the existence of God.

But this strange tale of one man’s vengeful battle against nature can also be viewed as a rather unorthodox whaling manual, with a variety of chapters about different whale species, including an in-depth analysis of the sperm whale and its secretive behaviour.

...

A sailor on duty at the Mast Head

There are also large sections of the book concerned with shipboard etiquette and the mechanics of the whale hunt. One such chapter is ‘The Mast Head’ which deals with the art of standing atop the ship’s t’gallant-mast on two thin parallel sticks called the t’gallant cross trees, where it was the sailor’s duty to keep a look out for any sign of the whale.

Melville goes on to describe in great detail a romantic history of the Mast Head and the fact that it has been irrevocably altered by the invention of the ‘crow’s nest’ by the Greenland whaler called Captain Sleet - it seems that the author is having fun at the expense of the Greenland whalers and the extreme weather conditions they had to endure, because when he refers to Captain Sleet he is in actual fact talking about the real inventor of the crow’s nest William Scoresby Senior.
Later in the chapter Melville admits to a secret admiration for William Scoresby and his crow’s nest, but still he adheres to the fact that an aspect of seamanship had gone forever. He considers that the endless hours, days and months spend atop the ship’s mast, with nothing but the vast sprawling ocean below and a sailor’s wild romantic thoughts for company, would be all but lost to the poor soul hidden inside the closetted confines of Sleet’s crow’s nest.

'Heed it well, you pantheists!'

STILL LIFE

2010-06-19T00:55:00.012+02:00

Barnacles and limpets are a common sight on any of the rocks around Whitby, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the two creatures are somehow related. Indeed for a long time naturalists classified both as molluscs, along with the whelks, mussels, cockles and winkles familiar from seafood stalls.

Its true that both barnacles and limpets are apparently sessile, that is to say they don't move much, and both have similar shaped shells. However in 1830 an army surgeon called J. V. Thompson published a paper snappily entitled On the cirripedes or barnacles; demonstrating their deceptive character; the extraordinary metamorphosis they undergo, and the class of animals to which they undisputably belong.

Thompson, who was an amateur naturalist by inclination, examined the life cycle of banacles and discovered that they had a planktonic larval stage called a nauplius exactly like that of a crab or lobster. The nauplius then went though transformation into another unique stage known as a cyprid.

Thompson found that the non-feeding cyprid had the job of finding a suitable rock or shell on which to settle and spend the rest of its adult life. Once a desirable location was found, the cyprid would cement itself to the surface with its attachment antennae and then form calcified plates around its body becoming a fully formed young barnacle.

Thompson's dilligent work placed the barnacles once and for all alongside the crabs, lobsters, shrimps and prawns in the class Crustacea.

In effect they glue their heads to a rock, build a protective casing around themselves with a door in the top, stick their legs (cirri) out and waft water containing tiny items of planktonic food into their mouths.

This is known as cirral beating, but you have to creep up very quietly to see it in action. Once there is a slight hint of vibration, or once a shadow is cast over the rockpool, the cirri immediately contract back into the safety of the shell in the blink of an eye.

The picture below shows several examples of the common cirripede Semibalanus balanoides on a Sandsend rock. As well as the adults there are plenty of youngsters with much smaller shells which are approximately a month or so old.

Also I've ringed a couple of 1-2 week old light brown post-larval individuals. These are just transforming from cyprid larvae into fully fledged barnacles, but have not yet become calcified.

THE BATTLE OF BANNIAL FLATT

2010-06-05T23:50:00.011+02:00

...

BY RICHARD LOCKER

...

It was a cold, snow covered morning on the 3rd February 1940, when the crew of the impressively large Radar station situated at Danby Beacon located and confirmed the presence of enemy bombers patrolling the seas off the North East coast of England.

The information was immediately relayed to the only airfield not snowbound that morning at Acklington in Northumberland, which was home to Flight Lieutenant Peter Townsend and the 43 Squadron. Once alerted to the imminent danger a section from B flight was dispatched to intercept the enemy force.

RAF Danby Beacon radar station as it looked in 1940

Flight Lieutenant Townsend and B flight eventually made contact with the Germans just off the coast at Whitby. The enemy plane sighted was a Heinkel III (a slow moving German bomber), which had been part of a bigger operation that day, its objective was to locate and destroy British shipping in the North Sea.The German plane stood little chance as the three British Hawker Hurricanes swarmed around it. Shot to pieces, the Heinkel limped on, desperate to escape the British onslaught.

The bomber, now out of control and losing altitude, made for land, and so it was that the town of Whitby awoke that morning to a dreadful sound as the damaged plane screeched over its roof tops.

The bomber finally crashed on the outskirts of town at Bannial Flatt, narrowly missing the farm house that stood there. Tragically two of the aircrew Rudolf Leuchake (observer) and Johann Meyer (flight engineer and ventral gunner) were killed in the attack. Of the two remaining airmen Unter Offizer Herman Wilms (pilot) survived and Karl Missy (radio operator and dorsal gunner) received severe wounds.

Then Flight Lieutenant Peter Townsend

The pilot having managed to free himself as well as being able to burn the official flight documents, tried to make good his escape, but was quickly apprehended by George Walker a postal worker who having seen the plane crash had been one of the first arrive on the scene. His Great Granddaughter Anna Welford would later recount George’s version of that mornings events:

“The pilot then gave himself up, however my Great Grandad and the other witnesses did not realise that the German was carrying a gun, luckily no harm came to him or the other witnesses.

As soon as the situation was under control my Great Grandad had to resume his postal duties…..all in day’s work”

A second witness, Roy Steele a ten year old boy from Hawsker, had been helping his Grandfather on the farm that morning when he happened to hear machine gun fire, looking up he saw the approach of the damaged bomber seconds before it crashed into the farm yard.

Quickly coming to the aid of the crash victims the boy was told by his Grandfather to climb into the wreckage and free the gunner who had been trapped in the rear of the plane. Both the surviving airmen were then unceremoniously locked in the farm’s coal house, where they stayed until Special Constable Arthur Barrett arrived with reinforcements.

Upon discovering the outcome of the attack Flight Lieutenant Peter Townsend along with two other pilots went to visit the survivors of the crash in hospital, bringing with them gifts of fruit, cigarettes and a sense of camaraderie for men, who like themselves, faced their fate every time they took to the air. The dead German crewmen were buried with full military honours at Catterick. A wreath was placed on their coffins, with a card that read 'From 43 Squadron with sympathy'.

The crashed Heinkel at Bannial Flatt farm

It would later emerge that this was in fact the first enemy plane to be shot down over England since World War One, but the significance of the bravery, heroism and tragedy of that day would somehow be lost as the war years continued to grind on and the subsequent death toll reached overwhelming proportions.

RADIO CAEDMON

2010-06-04T18:46:00.011+02:00

On the 30th of May, BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please featured Liverpool poet Roger McGough investigating the wealth of poetry manuscripts held by Cambridge University Library.

Among these was the Moore Bede, an early manuscript of The Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ( Ecclesiastical History of the English People). It was donated to the library by George I who purchased it from Bishop John Moore (1646-1714).

Caedmon's Hymn as it appears in the Moore Bede

Dated to the eighth century, it cosists of 128 pages. The final page contains a version known as the Northumbrian aelda recension of Caedmon's Hymn, thought to be the earliest occurrence of the poem.

Here is a short clip of the programme in which, after a brief introduction, the poem is firstly read in Anglo Saxon with its rich rhythms and characteristic consonants, and then offered in a modern translation read by the actress Juliet Stevenson

TWO FEMALE SAILORS

2010-05-23T23:28:00.008+02:00

'Two or three years ago there was a great run on female sailors. Every newspaper has its paragraph announcing the discovery of a female sailor. The result was a through conviction in the public mind that all sailors were female sailors - that there were no other sailors than female sailors in disguise; and now the curiosity would be the discovery of a male sailor, if such a phenomenon could be well authenticated.'
From The Examiner, 25th March 1843.

MARIANNE REBECCA JOHNSON

In 1807 a Master Bricklayer working in Bishopsgate, London saw what he thought was a sailor boy sitting in a doorway in a very sorry state. The youth was drenched with rain, shivering with cold and weeping inconsolably.

The man questioned the boy on his situation and discovered that he had run away from a northern coal ship, now in Pool, on which he had served a four year apprenticeship. He avowed that he would rather face the hangman's noose than return on board.

The pair went to The Bull's Head for rest and refreshment, but on entering the inn the lad fainted through fatigue and hunger upon the stone floor. On loosening his neck-handkerchief and opening his shirt to aid resuscitation, the sailor's true sex became apparent.

The hostess of The Black Bull took the girl under her benevolent wing, displaying great understanding and kindness. At length the following narrative emerged:

She was a native of Whitby named Marianne Rebecca Johnson whose Father had died in the service of his country. Her Mother remarried another man and the family continued to live in Whitby. One day whilst at work in the town, her Stepfather took her away and forced her to don sailor's attire. He threatened to murder her if she ever disclosed her true sex, and he bound her up as an apprentice on the coal ship Mayflower of Sunderland, on which she served for four years without her true gender ever coming to light. She was known as William Johnson.

On the Monday prior to her discovery, she was ill and in a very delicate situation. Thinking her lazy and insolent, the mate had her severely flogged. On the Tuesday morning with cunning and determination she made good her escape.

It turned out that the girl's Father had treated her Mother in a similar way. She too had been forced into sailor's clothes, and with her hair cropped enrolled on board a ship of war .

She served for seven years before being mortally wounded in the late taking of Copenhagen(August 16th-September 5th 1807). A letter written just before her death to a friend in Whitby made clear the circumstances of her fate. She clearly preferred the hardship of a life at sea to the chance of ever meeting her brutal husband again.

Marianne Rebecca Johnson was just seventeen.

The Cabin Boy by Ralph Hedley 1891

THOMAS STEWART

One day in 1860 a jolly looking sailor boy calling himself Thomas Stewart took lodgings in the Royal Princess Inn, Church Street, Whitby. Several other seamen were in the bar and the drinks were flowing freely, as they do on such occasions. As the night wore on, being suitably inebriated and in pleasant company, he began to display his unusual vocal prowess.

It was all going well until the party spilled out onto Church Street. A passing police constable noticed that the lad's voice and appearance betrayed a certain feminine quality.

The constable accompanied the sailor to his lodgings, and the landlady confirmed that there were good grounds for suspicion. Being drunk and extremely foul mouthed, the sailor was locked in a cell overnight. In the morning a doctor confirmed the diagnosis.

The girl claimed to be a native of Glasgow whose Mother was dead and whose Father had drowned at sea. Having four sailor brothers, at the age of twelve she too decided on a career at sea. She enrolled on a ship bound for Australia. For five years she followed her chosen occupation, her last voyage being aboard The Morning Star.

She was brought before the Magistrate, who noted the blackness of her teeth from smoking and chewing tobacco, and her comprehensive seafaring knowledge. She was keen to obtain another voyage of eighteen months. She thought then she would have saved enough to purchase some petticoats and follow a calling more becoming of a female.

It was recommended that she was seen safely out of town and given 3 shillings out of the box. However she was reported drunk again the same evening at Upgang, and likewise the following day at Hinderwell.

She too was seventeen years of age.

A group of 19th century sailors

Thanks to Richard Locker for research and ideas.

THE PENNY HEDGE

2010-05-13T01:36:00.003+02:00

On Rogation Wednesday, the eve of Ascention Day, the Penny Hedge or Horngarth is planted on the shore of Whitby harbour. Despite the commonly recited story of the three noblemen chasing a wild boar into a hermit's cell, killing the hermit and being required to build the hedge as pennance, the true origin of the ceremony is lost in the mists of time.

At sunrise stakes cut from hazel on Eskdaleside, using a knife bought for a penny, are carried through the town to the designated place in the harbour. The hedge should be constructed well enough to withstand three tides, however in 1981 the site was covered by eight feet of seawater and a hedge was not built thereby rightfully ending the pennance.

Nevertheless the ceremony continues. Here is a video of this year's Horngarth ritual at 9am on a sunny and pleasantly breezy Ascention Eve.

ARTHUR MACHEN

2010-05-08T21:08:00.022+02:00

“I saw the wonder of the town in the light of the afterglow that was red in the west. The clouds blossomed into rose-gardens; there were seas of fairy green that swam about isle of crimson light; there were clouds like spears of flame, like dragons of fire. And under the mingling lights and colours of such a sky Banwick went down to the pools of it’s land locked harbour and climbed again across the bridge towards the ruined abbey and the great church on the hill”

The Happy Children

The Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is best known as a writer of supernatural and horror fiction. A contemporary of Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde he also influenced the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Alan Moore. His most famous books include The Great God Pan (1894), The Three Impostors (1895) and The Hill Of Dreams (1907), but it was his work as a journalist for the London paper The Evening News that would lead him to visit Whitby in November 1916.

The visit was arranged ostensibly for Machen to write an article on the town’s resurgent jet industry, which had seen a revival due to the wartime fashion for wearing mourning jewellery. But what really fascinated him was the town itself, regarding it as beautiful and unspoilt, he would later compare it favourably to seeing the view of Avignon from Rhone; ‘It was wonderful, but I do not know it more wonderful than Whitby as I saw it a few days ago’. It was this enthusiasm for the place that inspired him to writing the short story ‘The Happy Children’.

...

The Happy Children is a ghostly tale set in the town of Banwick, and like all Machen’s war time fiction it is a propaganda piece designed to appeal to the nation’s jingoistic mood at the time. However, unlike his most famous wartime piece ‘The Bowmen’ (a story about invoking the spirit of St George and the Agincourt archer on the blood drenched battlefields of Belgium), The Happy Children is a much more subtle story, involving such wartime tragedies as the sinking of the Lusitania and the believed atrocities committed by the German army in France and Belgium.

Machen would also have been aware that Whitby had suffered it’s own atrocities two years earlier, when it was bombarded along with Scarborough and Hartlepool by two German destroyers, killing 137 people and injuring a further 592.
...
As was usual for Machen’s writing, the story also has a strong religious undercurrent, referring to the Biblical slaughter of babies by Herod as is celebrated in the feast of Holy Innocents. But what is more prevalent in this piece is Machen’s own personal belief system, which together with detailed and evocative descriptions of nature and the landscape, conjures up a seemingly more magical and ancient time.

Throughout the First World War Arthur Machen was a patriot giving his full support to the war in Europe, believing that the Allied forces were fighting a just war against the evil German Empire. He was less forthcoming with his praise when it came to the battle for hearts and minds back in England though, especially after the publication of The Bowmen and the resultant ‘Angels Of Mons’ myth.

What becomes more apparent with stories like The Happy Children is that his writing takes on a more serene quality, as if Machen himself having become increasingly distressed by the utter devastation the war was causing, wants to escape along with the war’s innocent victims into a more peaceful place.

Read The Happy Children by Arthur Machen here

Written exclusively for OUT ON YE! by RICHARD LOCKER.
Thanks to Gwilym Games and Chris Corner for all their help.

THE WHITBY MOLE

2010-04-21T21:03:00.013+02:00

Sir Hugh Cholmley was one of Whitby’s greatest benefactors, helping to completely redefine the town in the early 17th century. In 1632 he was charged with building a stone pier at the mouth of the harbour. A necessary improvement which enabled the town to accommodate the new alum mining industry and the subsequent increase in shipping it brought.

Upon completion of the pier, Sir Hugh Cholmley found that his engineering skills had been noted and held in the highest regard, eventually winning him a royal commission to build a gigantic Mole (a defensive harbour wall) in Tangier.

Up until 1661 the sea port of Tangier in Morocco had been under the rule of the Portuguese, but was ceded to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to Charles II.

Sir Hugh Cholmley arrived in Tangier in June 1663, bringing with him 'about 40 masons, miners and other proper artists and workmen'. Apparently it was with considerable persuasion that he had managed to attract these artisans, because it was ‘a place where, in the beginning, so many men had died’.

Work on the foundations began in the August 1663, but immediately the project was beset by a number of problems. The main one being that the cost of the project had been considerably underestimated. Cholmely decided to source the building material from a nearby quarry, which was immediately christened 'Whitby' by the Yorkshire miners. As the project continued Cholmely built ‘a little town’ at Whitby to house the workmen and their families, with stabling for ninety horses, storehouses for provisions and materials of all sorts'.

...

A plan of Tangier from an engraving by I. Seller dated 1680. The area named Whitby is highlighted in yellow.

When eventually the Mole was finished in 1676, it was described as ‘in its design the greatest and most noble undertaking in the world’ and was said to be 'now near 470 yards long and 30 yards broad, with several pretty houses upon it and many families. On the inner side twenty four Arched Cellars and before them a curious walk, with pillars for mooring of ships'. Also housed on the Mole was a vast array of guns readied for the port’s defence.

The Mole at Tangier, engraved for the first edition of Rev. John Smith's 1825 edition of Samuel Pepy's diary.

Sadly the commissioning of the Mole seemed to be the only success story of the English occupation of Tangier, as in all that time the management of the city itself had been left to Governors who had very little interest in maintaining a profitable and sustainable outpost on the North African coast. It was in 1680 that Whitehall finally ran out of patience and money and decided that Tangier had become expendable.

In 1683 Lord Dartmouth and his fleet set sail from England with secret instructions to abandon the city and destroy the Mole. Samuel Pepys was assigned the job of 'taking stock of the colony and winding up any unfinished business', and it was he who described its final destruction.

Bombs were planted under the Mole arches, at first unsuccessfully, but later with more exciting results. Pepys rushed from his dinner, on one occasion, to watch as a great mine cracked the Mole from side to side, showering rubble over the harbour and the ships in the bay. Later he stood at a window with Lord Dartmouth to observe the end of the Mole shoot up into the night sky, falling in fragments all around them. It was as good as a firework display.

Eventually on the 6th February 1684 Lord Dartmouth set sail for England leaving behind him the ruined city of Tangier, which on his departure immediately fell into the hands of Moulay Ismail and the Berber tribesmen of the Rif.

Source material - Tangier City of the Dream by Iain Finlayson

Enid Routh - Tangier (1912)

Written by RICHARD LOCKER exclusively for OUT ON YE!

WHALEBONE BUILDINGS

2010-04-19T22:56:00.005+02:00

For more than 100 years from the middle of the 18th century, whaling played a major part in Britain's prosperity. Of course Whitby has a long and well documented history in the pursuit of these huge seagoing mammals. No visitor to the town can go home without having their picture taken next to the whalebone arch on the west cliff.

Unlike today's throwaway culture, all the parts of the whale's body were utilised. The shape of the jaw bones meant that they could be pressed into service as roof supports or crucks for buildings without being refashioned. Indeed the new Whitby Marina Facilities Centre imitates this iconic shape using modern materials.

These two pictures from the 1930s show what was Moorsom's warehouse, under the shadow of Ruswarp viaduct. The structure is being dismantled and broken whalebones can be seen in the foreground. The roof was probably made from the canvas of reclaimed sails stretched across the bones. It is said that somewhere a photograph exists from inside the shed with the roof intact.

Liverpool was home to a similar shed and the roof of the blubberhouse at King's Lynn was supported by 13 upright jawbones. It is also said that the Victorians had a penchant for building summerhouses from them.

...

In the Beck Isle Museum at Pickering is a pair of whalebones which originally stood as an arch at the entrance to a field in Swainsea Lane. They were brought to the town by Nicholas Piper, a whaling captain who lived in Pickering and sailed from Whitby.

LEWIS CARROLL AND THE WHITBY ADVENTURE (1854-1871)

2010-04-10T10:50:00.010+02:00

...

The Youth at Eve had drunk his fill,
Where stands the ‘Royal’ on the Hill,
And long his mid-day stroll had made,
On the so-called ‘Marine-Parade’ -

The Lady of The Ladle (1854)

Lewis Carroll

When Lewis Carroll first came to visit Whitby in 1854, it was as a 22 year old student of Christ Church college called Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Included as a member of a Mathematical Party, Dodgson’s apparent reason for the trip was to give a series of academic lectures in and around the town, but the true significance of the visit was later recalled by Dr Thomas Fowler, a fellow member of the same reading party. He said that Dodgson "used to sit on a rock on the beach telling stories to a circle of eager young listeners of both sexes", and he believed that "it was there that Alice was incubated".

The plaque at 5 East Terrace, now La Rosa Hotel

It is also true to say that whilst on his visit to Whitby in 1854 Dodgson had his first piece of work published, a satirical poem called The Lady of The Ladle, which appeared in the local newspaper the Whitby Gazette. Dodgson was also composing a poem at the same time called She’s All My Fancy Painted Him, which went on to form the basis of the White Rabbit’s ‘evidence’ at the trial of the Knave of Hearts.

Dodgson felt these and subsequent work to be of a substandard quality saying in 1855, "I do not think I have written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day".

The first use of the pen name Lewis Carroll appears in 1856 with the publication of a romantic poem called Solitude. Dodgson’s pseudonym was actually a play on words, Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus (the Latin for Lutwidge) and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles is derived. In this same year Henry Liddell became the new Dean of Christ Church, bringing with him his family including his daughter Alice Liddell.

Alice Liddell

Little is known of Carroll subsequent visits to Whitby (seven in all), but considering that Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland (1865) and Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There (1871) had both been published in the interim and both had met with critical acclaim as well as considerable success, he may well have used the town as a pressure valve enabling him to escape the trappings of his new found fame.

Tenniel's illustration of The Walrus and the Carpenter

The only other significant connection between Lewis Carroll and Whitby is the poem The Walrus And The Carpenter found in Through The Looking Glass, which was thought to have been inspired by Carroll’s walks along Whitby beach. Whatever influence Whitby had on Carroll’s literary output, it can be assumed the unique ambience of the town and the surrounding area played an important role in his imaginings, and that he certainly had a place in his heart for the little town lost somewhere between the land and the sea.

Read the whole of The Lady of the Ladle and Coronach, another poem featuring Whitby, here.

Source material: The Origins of Alice By Derek Hudson
Wikipedia - Lewis Carroll

Many thanks to Richard Locker for writing this article.

CAPTAIN SCORESBY AND THE POLAR BEAR

2010-03-20T15:49:00.012+01:00

The whaling ships that sailed to the Arctic from Whitby would take polar bears as well as whales. These could be sold to zoos and fairs for a tidy price. Frequently a mother and cub would be encountered by the crew in the desolate landscape of the northern ice field.

This story is of a polar bear captured by the most famous of 18th century whaling captains, William Scoresby senior of Whitby.

It seems a member of Scoresby's valliant crew came upon a female bear and her cub and carried out the usual protocol. It was customary to dispatch the mother with a well aimed shot. Often the cub would be more puzzled and frightened than vicious. It was swiftly trussed up and taken back to the ship.

Usually the cub would be kept in a barrel with bars over the front for the entire voyage. Maybe a fish would be tossed in every now and again, occasionally the hapless animal would be doused with a bucket of sea water.

Scoresby however fastened this particular bear to a point on the deck. With a regime of painful taps to the bear's black nose and rewards of whale meat for good behaviour, the good captain was able to lead the cub round the deck on a rope leash. By the end of the season he considered it tame.

Unfortunately, once the ship was back in Whitby, the unfamiliar noises and smells of the port confused the bear. It reared up on its hind legs, broke free of its tethering and ran off through the town, disappearing into the alleyways and yards.

Eventually a posse of angry men surrounded the bear in Cockmill Wood. With weapons at the ready, they were quite prepared to kill the beast if need be.

...

Much to everyone's surprise, Captain Scoresby added to his reputation by pushing his way through the rabble before anyone was injured. He walked up to the cub which proceeded to lick his hand with its long black tongue, welcoming back its master. He tied a length of rope around its neck and led it peacefully away, much to the relief of the assembled townsfolk.

Soon afterwards the bear was taken to London's Tower Zoo where it eventually died.

No animals were harmed in the production of this featurette.

ST. OSWALD'S CHURCH, LYTHE

2010-03-06T22:53:00.005+01:00

In Domesday Book the manor of Lid, now called Lythe, was held by someone called Nigel. There is no mention of a place of worship until 1100, when Nigel's son is recorded as making a grant of the church at Lythe to Nostel Priory, near Wakefield. In 1154 Robert, Priest of Lythe, is mentioned in an ancient document. These are the earliest written records of the Church.

1910 was the last time St. Oswald's Church was restored. Built into the walls and buttresses of the old church, many ancient carved stones were discovered which helped to shed light on the distant origins of worship at the site.

Examination of these precious finds showed that two of the stones were Anglo-Saxon, dating back to the 7th or 8th centuries. These may indicate the existence of a stone church at Lythe prior to the Viking invasion and contemporaneous with Streoshalh, the abbey of St. Hilda destroyed by the Vikings, which they renamed Whitby.

The majority of the stones are Anglo-Scandinavian, of late 9th to early 10th century origin. They are all funeral monuments, or fragments thereof. A striking crosshead is noteworthy because the face at the centre of the cross has no halo and therefore may not necessarily depict Christ.

A long heavy 'hogback' gravestone was found to show a previously unknown carving once it was cleaned of moss and lichen. A simple figure thought to represent the norse god Tyr is depicted being attacked by two wild animals, possibly wolves. He's become known as the Gingerbread Man, for obvious reasons.

There is also a collection of later stones from the Norman church. The old walls on the North and East sides of the church were probably their work. A large stone coffin also stands in the aisle of the church as part of the permanent exhibition.

A selection of stones are on permanent display and the church is open daily. Many more are stored in the crypt and can be viewed by special arrangement.

THIN ICE

2010-02-25T10:52:00.005+01:00

12 January 1891

On Saturday the weather continued frosty and fine at Whitby and the neighbourhood, and hundreds of young people were out on the ice skating on Ruswarp dam and on the River Esk adjoining the Carrs.

...

A sad fatality occurred on Ruswarp dam, at the lower part. A young man named James Bell, about 19 years of age, son of Mr.George Bell, fishing boat proprietor, ventured too far down the dam, where the ice was not quite so firm as in the upper reaches.

The ice suddenly gave way, and he was submerged. An effort was made to rescue him by Mr.Naylor, of the Home and Colonial Stores, but the unfortunate young man disappeared beneath the ice. The body has not yet been recovered.

...

From The Times 1891

0°C 21.02.10

2010-02-21T20:07:00.004+01:00

Click to expand the images

EN PLEIN AIR

2010-02-21T00:26:00.016+01:00

FREDERICK WILLIAM JACKSON 1859-1918

Gilbert Foster, Fred Jackson and Mark Senior had been painting in Staithes from about 1880. The group that formed around them became known as The Staithes Group. Despite the lack of a strong leading figure, such as Stanhope Forbes at the artists' colony in Newlyn, the Staithes artists held a strong belief that art should not be shackled by the rigid conformity of the establishment. Indeed they split from the Yorkshire Union of Artists and held their own independent exhibition for the first time in 1901 at the Fishermen's Institute in Staithes.

Frederick William Jackson is often falsely referred to as an English impressionist. Many of the Staithes painters had studied on the continent and the influence of impressionism can certainly be seen in their work, but it never hides an underlying draughtsmanship and a solidity of form. They never fully submerged themselves in its essential spirit.

The French painter Bastien Lepage belonged to group of watered down impressionists known as Juste Milieu (Middle of the Road). Leplage was a huge influence on Fred Jackson, particularly with the idea of 'plein air' painting.

Fred Jackson and Laura Knight on the beach at Staithes

Artists painting in the open air is a common sight in Whitby and the surrounding area these days, but when the impressionists first took their paints and easels outside to capture, for instance, the changing quality of sunlight at different times of the day, it was quite revolutionary.

Plein air painting also became the fashion in the artists' colony at Newlyn in sunny Cornwall. The Staithes painters however had to cope with all the bad weather the North Sea could throw at them. Their dedication to plein air often took its toll. John William Howey, for instance, died in Hartlepool in 1938 from typhus caught by drinking contaminated water whilst painting en plein air.

Horse drawn Sled in the snow by F. W. Jackson

In 1914 Fred Jackson visited Russia where, despite the freezing weather he continued to paint outdoors. Many consider these paintings to be his most vibrant and innovative.

The artist Laura Knight said this of Jackson in her autobiography:
'He painted out of doors in any weather. Under the mittens he wore, his hands were swollen, stiff and chapped, as were the edges of his ears and the wings of his nostrils.'

Fisherfolk at Runswick by F. W. Jackson
...

Fisherwomen by the Quay at Staithes by F. W. Jackson

GALILEE BREAD

2010-02-01T21:50:00.011+01:00

Mrs Alice Galilee owned a cottage in Jackson's Yard which she rented out. In 1847 she made a bequest that the income from the cottage should go towards providing bread for the poor of the parish.

As you enter St. Mary's Parish Church, Whitby, the first pew on the left hand side is the churchwarden's pew. On the wall above the pew is a rack on which this bread was placed. Charity bread cupboards and traditional bread doles are not uncommon, like the ones at Cartmel Priory and Kirkby Stephen for example, both in Cumbria.

The fund provided by Mrs Gallilee has now been merged into the Whitby United Charities, and the bread is now no longer placed there before every Sunday morning service. The custom still continues on the main festivals of the Church's year though.

I have it on good authority that bread from Woodhead's bakery is prefered to that from Botham's as it lasts longer.

This is not meant as an endorsement of any particular bakery. As well as the two mentioned, other quality purveyors of bread and bread related items are available in the town. Remember bread prices may go up as well as down.

THE FATE OF THE BRIG LUMLEY

2010-01-13T23:17:00.007+01:00

On Saturday the 15th of January 1881 Whitby was beset by a northern gale, bringing with it blinding snow showers and heavy seas. At around 10.30pm a ship was spotted struggling against the crashing waves. It was the brig Lumley of South Shields with her cargo of coal and a crew of ten men. The signal gun was fired from the battery and hundreds of Whitby folk left the warmth of their houses and cottages to watch the unfolding drama.

At that time there was a lifeboat station at Upgang, and from there the Joseph Sykes was launched into the teeth of the storm. By this time the Lumley had struck the dangerous rocks at Upgang and was beginning to break up. The voices of the crew could be heard distinctly over the tempest, their anguished cries carried on the wind as they lashed themselves to the rigging of the doomed vessel.

Despite endeavouring to throw a line to the crew on the stricken brig (some witnesses claim at least thirteen attempts were made, each one resulting in the Joseph Sykes being hurled back by the terrific swell) no progress toward securing the lives of the battered sailors was forthcoming. Having persevered in the worst of conditions for at least two hours, the attempt was called off, the lifeboatmen utterly exhausted.

The Whitby lifeboat, the Robert Whitworth was also launched by coxwain Henry Freeman, the legendary sole survivor of the Whitby lifeboat disaster of 1861. As she approached the Lumley, the red light on board the brig was suddenly extinguished. At the same time a blue light became apparent on the shore at Upgang. This was assumed to mean that the entire crew had been rescued and the last man, on leaving the vessel, had put out the so called danger lights.

The Robert Whitworth duly put back to shore, only to learn the terrible truth that their bravery had come to nothing. At midnight the Lumley was rent asunder like matchwood on the Upgang rocks, the crew's expiring cries being clearly heard on shore. On Sunday morning only a few vestiges of the wreck were visible to stand monument to that terrible night. Of the ten strong crew of the brig Lumley, every last soul perished.

WINTERWATCH 2

2010-01-05T21:51:00.008+01:00

It's been a bit nippy out over the last few days..

"BOTTLED TORTURE"

2010-01-02T13:25:00.000+01:00

The Whitby Times not only reported local news but also stories from Britain and around the world. This article, published on Friday, February 7th, 1908, gives an account of an appropriately named practical joke that had "tickled" Londoners almost one hundred and two years ago.

XMAS 2008

2009-12-28T11:48:00.003+01:00

The organ featured here is the old Southsea Gavoli belonging to Graham Atkinson.

WINTERWATCH

2009-12-22T00:16:00.019+01:00

As I walked over the western plain

The silent snow descending

I saw winter lean on the valley's edge

His frozen medals spending

Charles Causley

FRUMETY

2009-12-19T10:57:00.011+01:00

The Snap-dragon fly from Lewis Carol's third chapter of Through The Looking Glass, illustrated by John Tenniel. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy...it lives on frumenty and mince-pie.

'In the matter of the Christmas feasting there is nothing so distinctive of it as in the making of the frumety. He is no Yorkshireman who does not know what furmety or frumety is. It is one of our institutions. As regularly as Christmas comes round preparations are made for the manufacture of this Yorkshire dish.'
Rev. M.C.F. Morris from Yorkshire Folk Talk 1892

A 17th century recipe for frumenty

...

The traditional method of making frumety was a time consuming labour. If a household had no wheat of their own, the tradition was to beg some from neighbouring farms on St Thomas' Day (December 21st).

The wheat should be soaked in water for a day then put in a bag and beaten to get the hullins, the outer coats of the wheat grains, to seperate. Often this was done by thrashing the bag with a flail. Then the whole lot was put into water. The hullins would float to the surface and the pure wheat could be extracted.

After being put in an oven to cree for two or three hours, milk was added and the pan was put over the fire to boil. Sugar was added together with nutmeg and any other spices and flavourings according to people's tastes and fancies.

The dish was originally eaten on Christmas Eve together with cheese, gingerbread and yule cakes. These were cakes of currants, citron and other tasty ingredients. Each person had one to eat with the frumety.

Easier recipes for frumety can be found without too much trouble on the web that generally don't involve setting about a sack of wheat on the kitchen floor with a flail.

Recipe 1
Recipe 2
Recipe 3

GUNNER ROBERT WATMORE

2009-12-13T11:19:00.007+01:00

This memorial to Gunner Robert Watmore is set in the grass at the front of some old people's flats close to The Metropole Hotel on the west cliff.

THE FISHING PARTY 1972

2009-12-10T16:54:00.013+01:00

Originally a radio play starring Wilfred Pickles, The Fishing Party by Peter Terson was screened in 1972 on BBC1 as part of the Play For Today series.

Three Leeds miners played by Brian Glover (Art), Ray Mort (Ern) and
Douglas Livingstone (Abe) arrive in Whitby for a spot of fishing. Filmed entirely on location in the town, the wry script is peppered with superb observation and marvellously written circular dialogue.

Although the scenes of the boat with the miners and a mysterious taciturn fisherman heading out of the harbour are not filmed sequentially (which makes the harbour seem bigger than it really is), we still get a glimpse of Boots' Corner and the old bridge to the East Pier.

Boots' Corner was a group of shops demolished in 1975. It comprised Boots' chemists, Whitby Fish Sales and The Yorkshire Bank. The buildings were on the right hand side of the bridge as you cross from the west side.

...

Watch The Fishing Party on YouTube

Buy from cultandraredvd.com

OLD KATHY

2009-12-08T10:50:00.016+01:00

Abe Rogers was a bold peddler who was afraid of nothing. Selling pins, needles and other small household items, he travelled from door to door and made a meagre living from his endeavours. He was used to crossing the vast swathes of moorland to get from one village to another. Changes in the weather, treacherous boggy ground, inpenetrable fog and the like held no fears for Abe Rogers.

One day on the moor a figure approached that Abe recognised instantly from her haggard outline and malevolent appearance. It was Old Kathy, the Ruswarp witch. Much feared in the area, it was said that a mere glimpse of her countenance could render one bewitched. No one dare cross the threshold of her cottage, and when she went walking wise folk kept their distance.

For a long forgotten and unrecorded reason a fierce dispute arose between them. Tempers flared and vicious words were exchanged. The witch suddenly drew a sharp knife from the copious folds of her clothing and angrily lunged at Abe. By no means a young man, the peddler nevertheless put up a spirited resistance and managed to wrestle the dagger wielding crone to the ground.

Struggling on the ground with the peddler astride her trying to wrest the knife from her bony grip, the hag began feverishly reciting a spell in some ancient language lost to time, screaming half formed words of hellish provenence into the misty moorland air.

As Abe watched, the fog ominously congealed into an army of weird unearthly creatures surrounding the two antagonists completely. Encouraged by Kathy's hysterical screams, the legion of demons closed in on Abe. A lesser man would have fled to the nearest village hostelry and drunk away the memory, perhaps convincing himself it was all a fanciful illusion, but not Abe the peddler. He stood his ground as the fiends approached. Reaching into his pack, he took a pinch of some unknown substance and cast it into the air.

Immediately a whirlwind began flinging grit and sand at the prostrate Kathy and her hellborn battallion of wraiths. As his persecutors fought against the freakish tornado, Abe grabbed his pack and made his getaway across the moor until Kathy's terrible screams faded into the distance and the drifting mists.

Although the villagers of Ruswarp remained in mortal dread of Kathy, whenever he was in the vicinity Abe always called on the old woman, walking straight into her cottage as bold as brass. As far as the meeting on the moors goes, no one will ever know the truth of that day.

Old Kathy (sometimes called Kattie or Katy) lived from 1775 until 1823. She is the only witch from North Yorkshire to have her individual likeness preserved. The doll was made over a century ago and formed part of schoolmaster John Hall's collection of visual aids for giving local history lessons.

The doll is still on display in Whitby Museum, Pannett Park.

PERFECT VENTRILOQUIAL DISPLAY

2009-11-23T21:11:00.009+01:00

From the Whitby Times of Friday 5th of November 1869, 140 years ago to the month. A popular performance by Professor Overton, the three-headed man, at Castleton Temperance Hall.

THE CRETEBLOCK

2009-11-18T11:25:00.012+01:00

Although concrete might at first seem to be a wholly impractical and rather cumbersome material to use in shipbuilding, in fact it makes a lot more sense than you might think. For boats over 25 feet long its often the cheapest and easiest material to employ. It doesn't need a weatherproof coating and it won't rust. Also a 30ft, 8 ton displacement vessel made of wood or concrete will weigh the same.

The Creteblock at Whitehall Shipyard in the 1940s

During ther First World War steel stocks were low. The British Admiralty ordered some support vessels to be made of concrete. Two were built at Whitehall Shipyard in Whitby, but by the time they were completed in 1919 the war was over.

...

The wreck of The Creteblock on Whitby Scar is a familiar sight to anyone who has walked along the rocks to Saltwick Bay at low tide. In fact this vessel was not one of those from The Whitehall Shipyard. The Creteblock was built in Essex. She was too late to see active war service and was used as a tug before being sold to a Teesside shipyard.

Brought to Whitby in the 1930s she remained there, a decaying hulk until 1947. She was towed out to sea to be scuttled but abandoned before deep water could be reached. She now lies battered and broken, crewed only by barnacles, limpets and mussels in her final resting place beneath Whitby's imposing cliffs..

...

AUTUMNWATCH 2

2009-11-09T01:02:00.006+01:00

All known living things are divided into five major groups, known as Kingdoms. Monera and Protista contain tiny, primitive organisms such as the various types of bacteria and other microbes. Animals and Plants are well known to us and relatively easy to identify.

The remaining Kingdom is Fungi. Unlike plants, Fungi cannot produce their own food by photosynthesis. Instead they absorb nutrients from their surroundings. They do not need the sun and they thrive in dark, damp places. Hence the black mould around your bath, the white coat of fluff on that orange that's been in the fruit bowl too long, and nasty, itchy Athlete's Foot.

Nevertheless a short Autumn walk in an area of woodland such as that around Falling Foss can yield beautiful examples of Fungi. The old deciduous trees around the waterfall (largely oak, birch and ash etc.) provide ample sustenance, whether alive or dead and decaying. Also the leaf litter that blankets the forest floor in Autumn hides many interesting surprises if you take time to look.

The Beefsteak Fungus Piptoporus betulinus

The Common Puffball Lycoperdon perlatum

The Birch Bracket Fungus Ganoderma applanatum

The Cep Boletus edulis

THREE BRIDGES: RUSWARP

2009-10-29T10:36:00.003+01:00

On the Sabbath morning of 13 July, at about six o'clock, the beautiful suspension bridge, erected by Colonel James Wilson MP was thrown down. In cosequence of the heavy and continued rains in the latter part of the week, the river Esk was swollen to a greater height than it has attained for many years.

These words describe the disastrous floods of 1828 which not only swept away this bridge, but many others along the Esk valley. Because of the topography of the valley, particularly it's trough like shape and the various dales ( Westerdale, Danbydale, Glaisdale etc.) which feed into it, the water level is prone to quickly rise and equally quickly subside.

Ruswarp Bridge destroyed by floods in 1828

...

This postcard shows a photograph of Ruswarp Bridge sometime before the floods of 1930, when on 23rd of July the waters rose to 5ft 2in in the upper room of The Bridge Inn. This bridge was also washed away during that terrible downpour when approximately 80 million tons of water were fed into the Esk valley in less than three days.

Ruswarp Bridge prior to 1930

...

...
This of course is the imposing and reassuringly sturdy looking iron bridge spanning the Esk at Ruswarp today. Reputedly made from iron supplied by the same company that supplied the iron for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The postcards are from the collection of Mark Lines.

Additional information from Ruswarp, A Brief History by Alan Whitworth,(Culva House Publications 2004)

The bridge during the 1930 floods

AUTUMNWATCH

2009-10-28T12:01:00.031+01:00

depth of autumn
a few leaves on the tree
dancing

autumn leaves
the girls talk about
christmas

2x haiku by john tiong chunghoo

photos: pannett park 28:10:09

PUSSY CAT, PUSSY CAT...

2009-10-27T23:45:00.019+01:00

In April builders renovating a house in Henrietta Street were working on the ceiling above the fireplace when a long deceased cat unceremoniously fell on them.

A relic of the time when it was considered wise to brick a live cat within the walls or chimney of a newly built dwelling to ward off witches and their familiars.

The practice was probably especially necessary in Whitby, because as late as the census of 1816 seven women gave their occupation as sorceress or fortune teller.

Builders have come across these wizened amulets all over the country. The Red Cat Hotel in Norfolk takes it's name from one of these mummified felines. Examples can also be seen in museums such as Portland in Dorset and Keswick in Cumbria.

Despite the belief that these superstitions are rooted deep in the past, Stuart Brown, the property renovator from Sleights who discovered the cat in Tim Deacon's cottage on Henrietta Street, walled the leathery furless body back where it was found. It remains there today steadfastly continuing it's work as a supernatural guardian.

QUEEN MARY II SAILS PAST WHITBY

2009-10-16T20:37:00.006+02:00

A fine sight this cold, blustery afternoon as the QM2 sailed close to Whitby, sounding her horn. Captain, Bernard Warner, brought the liner within sight of the town as a mark of respect for his friend Roy Weatherill, a lifeboatman from Whitby who passed away in June. A large crowd of spectators on the cliff tops watched her sail northwards towards Edinburgh. Camera flashes could be seen onboard. The haunting deep wail of the ship's horn was just audible over the wind and wave noise.

CHALET STAY OR CHALET GO?

2009-10-14T15:46:00.007+02:00

The Council have started taking away the beach huts today before the autumn storms do.

MAHARAJAH DULEEP SINGH

2009-09-27T12:21:00.012+02:00

The colourful life of Duleep Singh reads like a pulp romantic tragedy. The Maharajah of Lahore was born into fabulous wealth in 1838 when Britain was involved in a fierce struggle for Punjab.

In 1849 his mother was imprisoned, Punjab was annexed by Britain and the 11 year old Maharajah was deposed.

He came to England in 1854 and became a great favourite of Queen Victoria. He lived through his teens and into his twenties in Scotland, where he was known as 'The Black Prince of Perthshire'. He enjoyed game shooting and became well known for hosting lavish receptions and entertainments.

In 1860 he returned to India to rescue his mother from political exile in Nepal. Four years later, after the pair had become regulars on the society scene, she suddenly died. He returned to India to cremate her and arrived back in England with Bamba Muller, a girl from a Cairo mission school who became his wife.

They lived in Elveden, Surrey. Duleep Singh transformed the run-down estate into a modern, thriving game preserve. The house became a semi-oriental palace with huge paintings, grand sculptures and cases of jewels reminding visitors of his former status.

Even so he became dissolute, took mistresses, fathered illegitimate children and used up his generous allowance forcing him to beg for more from the Queen. With a sense of burning injustice, he returned to India in 1886 to place himself as the lawful sovereign of the Sikh people. Unfortunately he was arrested at Aden and returned to Europe.

After a miserable few years in Moscow he came to beg official pardon from the Queen. Duleep Singh was now a broken man. In 1893 the Maharajah of Lahore, who placed the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond in the hand of Queen Victoria, died of an epileptic fit in a lonely hotel room in Paris, penniless and shattered.

THE MAHARAJAH OF MULGRAVE

For four years, between 1859 and 1853, the Maharajah rented Mulgrave Castle from the Marquis of Normanby who was then the British Ambassador in Florence. He was often seen hawking on the moors in full Indian regalia accompanied by English gamekeepers in scarlet uniforms.

The Maharajah had a road between Sandsend and Whitby constructed following in part the line of the current route. It considerably shortened the distance by road between Mulgrave Castle and Whitby. Indeed the toll booth still remains, and tolls were being collected until 1925.

Unfortunately the legend that Duleep Singh had the road built because his elephants objected to walking along the beach cannot be verified. There is no evidence that elephants ever resided at Mulgrave.

Indeed there is no evidence that elephants don't like sand between their toes, as this photograph clearly shows. Probably taken in the early 1900s, after the death of Duleep Singh, these two seem quite happy on the sands below the battery. They were probably from a visiting circus.

PONY AND TRAP

2009-09-27T10:58:00.005+02:00

This pony and trap was seen on Whitby beach last weekend enjoying a trot along the sands in the afternoon sun.

Nice to see the old traditional forms of transport being kept alive. This picture shows Mr and Mrs J. Tinsley and their son William at Low Farndale around 1905.

RUSWARP

2009-09-22T18:01:00.004+02:00

Here's an old postcard showing Ruswarp High Street minus traffic. The old Post Office was on the left and has closed down, probably to be converted into accommodation. Rowing down the Esk is thirsty work so the Post Office was always handy for an ice pop before walking back to Whitby over the fields.