SUMMARY OF TOUR ALONG THE COAST

Distances.

Yarm
Saltburn			21		miles
Whitby			21		"
Scarborough			25		"
	Total		67		miles

Roads

Hills very steep and frequent near coast.
Surface usually good.

II

THE COAST

When one is approaching the coast of Yorkshire from the north, the important thing is to avoid the manufacturing towns of Stockton and Middlesbrough. This can be done by crossing the Tees at Yarm, and joining the splendid road that runs so straightly from this point to the sea. Those who have come from the dales will notice at once, even in Yarm, how greatly the houses here differ from the houses of the west. In that fair land the buildings, both small and great, have the character common to moorland buildings: they are stern and sturdy and grey; made not to please the eye, but to endure the buffetings of wind and rain. But these houses of the plain, it seems, do their best to provide the beauty that is lacking in scenery. They are warm and picturesque, red and tiled and gabled, a feature in the landscape. The wide street of Yarm, with its trees and grass and pretty buildings, has almost a foreign air. Beyond it is the straight road with the magnificent surface.

The views from this road, to right and left, are rather striking, each in its own way. On the left the scene is not beautiful, yet not without romance—the romance that is hidden under so much that is ugly. That long, long line of tall chimneys and distant masts, that cloud of smoke that darkens all the sky, are symbols of the spirit of adventure, of the love of enterprise, of untiring progress, of belief in the future; for surely the history of our commerce has included all these things. It was from Stockton that the first railway in the world ran to Darlington; and in Middlesbrough many of our merchant ships are built. Eighty years ago about a hundred people lived there: to-day there are a hundred thousand under that black pall.

To the right of us is an equally long line of another sort—the line of the Cleveland Moors. The curious excrescence of Roseberry Topping is conspicuous from the first, and even at this distance the monument to Captain Cook is visible on the hillside. For it was in the little village of Marton, through which we pass on our way to Guisborough, that James Cook was born, and learnt his lessons in the village school when not employed in scaring crows. Roseberry Topping, at first sight, looks like a huge tumulus. "It is the landmark that directs sailers, and a prognostick to the neighbours hereabouts." The view from its summit has been described by many writers, with degrees of enthusiasm varying from the "most agreeable prospect" of Camden to the ardour of another traveller, who declared that "there you may see a vewe the like whereof I never saw, or thinke that any traveller hath seene any comparable unto yt." A certain discreet author, quoting these words a hundred years ago, says gravely: "Accurate observation and comparison forbid us to ratify this assertion in its full extent."

The base of Roseberry Topping is largely composed of alum. In the reign of Elizabeth some alum works were set up at Guisborough, but were solemnly cursed by the Pope. His Holiness, it transpired, was himself the owner of some alum works.

The actual streets of Guisborough are not attractive, but seen from a distance the general effect of the little place is rather charming. It lies in a valley with the hills of Cleveland behind it, and towering above it is the great east window of its priory, bereft so entirely of tracery that it has the air of some stately gateway. This lovely fragment, this graceful window with its pinnacles and crockets, is all, except a Norman gateway, that is left of the burial-place of the English Bruces—the once rich and famous Augustinian priory whose buildings covered acres of ground, and whose prior "kept a most pompous house." At least two churches that have stood upon this spot were destroyed by fire, but it was not fire that caused this final destruction; not, as in one of the other cases, the conduct of "a vile plumber with a wicked disposition"; not even primarily the zeal of Henry VIII.'s commissioner; but the vandalism of one Chaloner, who bought it and hacked it to pieces. It was he who built the alum works that were so distasteful to the Pope, and it is quite possible that some of the stones of this Gothic masterpiece were used for the purpose. If this were the case, one could forgive the Pope for his methods of carrying on business.

At Skelton, over there on the hill, lived the Bruces of the English branch, who founded the priory. Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. and wife of James IV. of Scotland, raised a splendid cenotaph here to her husband's ancestors, the Bruces of Annandale and Skelton, only a short time before her brother made the place desolate for ever. The cenotaph was moved to the parish church, and was broken up in the eighteenth century. Until quite lately pieces of it were scattered in various parts of the church and priory, but it has now been restored with great care and set up near the west door of the church, with all its statues of Scottish and English Bruces except that of the greatest Bruce of all. King Robert's figure, it is believed, was on the west end that has long been lost. There is some fine old glass in this church, and a modern window of exceptional beauty.

Guisborough is not a place to stay in; but only six miles away is Saltburn with all its hotels. The short drive thither is pretty, and close to the wayside on the right is Upleatham Church, the smallest used for services in England, with a miniature tower and a nave about fifteen feet long. Saltburn is a rising watering-place, and has probably a gay future before it, for it has many charms for those who like plenty of breezes and bathing-boxes. It must have been a lovely spot when it was quiet, for its deep green dell ends in a fine cliff, below which the sea ripples over a many-coloured foreshore. The Zetland Hotel faces these things.

From Saltburn we may drive across to Brotton, or may take the longer way by Skelton, passing near the castle. This is now a house dating obviously from the eighteenth century; but I believe there are among its offices some slight remains of the castle of the Bruces—the castle that was, long after their day, the scene of much revelry on the part of its owner John Hall and his familiars. Among these was Laurence Sterne. "Its festive board," says a Georgian writer, "was attended by many of the literati of the age. Where genius and talent were blended in so close union we cannot but imagine that the feast of reason and the flow of soul were happily realised." According to authentic accounts the feast and the flow—not of reason nor of soul—made the place a perfect pandemonium.

Beyond Brotton the fine outline of Boulby Cliff rises before us, marred by the huge ironworks that disfigure so many places in Cleveland. Loftus and Easington are uninteresting; but a couple of miles after passing through the latter we dip into a lovely little tree-clad valley—one of the many green gorges that run down, "between the heather and the northern sea," with tumbling becks hurrying through them. We climb out of this one on a stiff gradient, and in another moment are looking down on Staithes.

At the top of the hill that leads down into Staithes there is a little railway inn. Here it is advisable to leave the car, for the hill is exceedingly steep, and there is no place in the tiny fishing town itself where a car may find shelter. Visitors, in fact, are not encouraged. If, seeking food, you ring at a door that seems to offer hope, you are recommended to try elsewhere. Yet the day will surely come when a large hotel will rise upon the hill, and lodging-houses will grow up round it, and we shall hear of the "upper" and "lower" towns, the new town and the old, and Staithes will be spoilt. Meantime a cup of tea may be had at the railway inn, which, though homely, is extremely clean.

Long ago James Cook, a little shop-boy hungry for the sea, ran away from Staithes. One marvels that any one could steel his heart to leave it. But to little James, hitherto occupied in the scaring of crows, Mr. Sanderson's shop under the hill was merely the gate of a wonderful new world, and he hardly hesitated before passing through it to his adventurous life and death; to the heights of Montcalm and the depths of hitherto unsounded waters, and finally to the knives of the South Seas. Even here, it is plain, he was dreaming of the South Seas. Some sailor brought a South Sea shilling to Staithes and Cook, seeing it in his master's till, was seized by the romance of it and changed it for a more prosaic coin. The transaction was suspicious in the eyes of Sanderson, and though he was sorry for his mistake when he understood it, James indignantly left him.

Staithes is dear to every artist who has ever looked upon its streets and quays, and indeed to every one who has an eye for pictorial effect. The deep valley that we crossed a few minutes ago ends here at the sea in two cliffs, and between them the town is wedged. The narrow paved street winds down to the shore, where little quays are washed by the waves, and little cottages cling to the cliff for shelter, and boats are drawn up on the beach. At the river's mouth, under the other cliff, hosts of seagulls whirl about the rocks or float upon the water; but most deplorably the picturesque wooden bridge that has figured in so many works of art is now replaced by an unsightly iron girder. Staithes is a place apart. In this deep gully, hidden from land and sea, one seems to be worlds away from ordinary English life. Even the people are picturesque; the women and little girls in pink or lilac sunbonnets and gay aprons, and the men and boys in dark blue knitted jerseys. Every group of children, every ancient mariner, every pretty girl in a doorway, is as decorative as a peasant in the chorus of an operetta.

This coast is indented with bays. Runswick, only a few miles away, may be seen by making a short digression from Hinderwell—more correctly Hilda's Well—where there is a holy well named in honour of the saintly abbess of Whitby. Runswick Bay is sheltered on every side by hills. A long low headland sweeps round it on the south, with a strip of sandy beach following the line of the land, and beyond the sand a curving line of surf. On the nearer side a cliff protects a cluster of red-tiled houses, and on the summit of this cliff the car must be left while we walk down the winding path. It is only from below that the pretty grouping of the village can be seen. In the tourist season this bay is rather thickly populated, and as the place cannot accommodate more than a few of its admirers, the fields near the shore are dotted with the tents of the resolute. But there must be times when this lovely haven is a haven of peace.

It is from the hill above Lythe that we first see the Whitby cliff in the distance, with the abbey standing up against the sky. The coast and its long line of surf are before us, and on the right are the trees of Mulgrave Park. The present castle of Mulgrave is modern, but there are still some ruins to be seen of the old fortress of the Saxon giant, Wada, and of the Norman Fossards and mediÆval Mauleys, and of the seventeenth-century President of the North, Lord Sheffield. It was one of the seven Peters of the house of de Malo-Lacu, or Mauley, who beautified the castle so greatly to his own satisfaction that he called it Moult Grace. "But because it became a grievance to the neighbours thereabouts, the people (who have always the right of coining words), by changing one single letter, called it Moult Grave, by which name it is everywhere known." Both its grace and its seriousness were wiped away by the time the Civil War was done.

The hill that leads from Lythe to the coast is nearly a mile long, and has gradients varying from 1 in 7 to 1 in 12. At the foot of it is Sandsend, as near to the sea as a place can stand. Here are the mouths of two little green valleys, each with its own little beck and each with its own little village. The villages, the old and the new, Sandsend and New Row, are very tiny indeed, but there is a good hotel between them, within reach of the salt spray, and houses are being busily built. The place is about to be fashionable, I think, and indeed it has charms, with the deep, green sides of the gorge at the back of it, and the sea foaming at its doors. For the greater part of our way from Sandsend to Whitby we are on a private road, with a toll of one shilling. There are several sharp curves upon it, with "Special Caution" notices, and the sides of the gully at Upgang are very steep.

Whitby, fifty or a hundred years ago, before the raucous cries of steam merry-go-rounds disturbed the ghost of CÆdmon or grinning Aunt Sallies stood beside the Abbey Cross, must have been the loveliest town in England. Even now it is bewitching. The old town and the new are separated by the long harbour, with its crowd of gaily painted cobles, its quays, its rows of nets hung out to dry; and so, from the windows of the Royal Hotel on the one cliff, one can look across the water at the other cliff, and the old houses closely packed upon the slope, the red-tiled roofs, the high-pitched gables, the queer passages; and raised high above these the grassy hilltop, the long, low church, the sloping graveyard where Mary Linskill lies, the tall grey cross of CÆdmon. Crowning all stands the ruined abbey on its height. A long flight of steps winds up the steep hillside from the harbour to the abbey, skirting the churchyard; and from this distance, in the dusk of evening, the stream of dark figures climbing endlessly might well be blackrobed pilgrims.

The tall gables of Whitby Abbey on its bare and desolate cliff are known to us in countless pictures. We are prepared for the general effect of wild stateliness, the turrets against the sky, the wind-swept height, the whirling seabirds; but the beauty of the architecture is a surprise to some of us—the slender lancets, the rich triforium and trefoiled arches, the rose window, and all the wealth of ornament. The ruins of the tower lie where they fell, a mass of dÉbris overgrown with grass and weeds. Here under the grey-brown walls, which are crumbled and bitten by the salt wind like a cliff against which the spray has dashed for centuries, we may sit and remember the saints and kings who came to this place when our history was young. It is not of the actual builders of these arches that we chiefly think. Hundreds of years before their day a monastery stood here, whose fame has always overshadowed this later one. This is the story of it:—

In the seventh century King Oswy of Northumbria and King Penda of the Mercians were at war. In vain Oswy offered conciliatory gifts: Penda would have none of them. "If that pagan," cried the exasperated Oswy, "refuses to receive our gifts we will offer them to the Lord, who knows how to accept them!" So he vowed, if he defeated the "wicked king," to dedicate his baby daughter to the cloister and give sites for twelve monasteries. This bleak cliff, then called Streaneshalch, the Bay of the Lighthouse, was one of the sites he gave when he had killed Penda, "that destroyer of his neighbours and fomenter of hostility," as William of Malmesbury calls him; and on it a monastery was built by the royal and saintly Abbess Hilda, "whom all that knew her called Mother, for her singular piety and grace." Here she ruled for many years, teaching peace and charity, training holy men—St. Wilfrid of Ripon, St. John of Beverley—and even conquering snakes and birds, it was said. Important things took place here during her rule. It was here that the great synod was held concerning the keeping of Easter, when St. Wilfrid quoted St. Peter and Colman quoted Columba till King Oswy closed the discussion by saying, "Peter is an officer whom I am not disposed to contradict ... lest when I come to the doors of the kingdom of heaven there may be no one to open them to me." And it was here, somewhere within a stone's throw of this actual spot, that CÆdmon, the lay-brother, the herdsman "who did not learn the art of poetry from man but from God," stood before St. Hilda in the presence of learned men, and told his vision and recited the verses that were the first English poem. "And his song and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers themselves wrote and learned from his mouth." It was somewhere close at hand, too, that this earliest of our poets lay down to die in the infirmary, "conversing pleasantly in a joyful manner." "I am in charity, my children," he said, "with all the servants of God." Then he crossed himself, "laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber, ended his life so in silence." St. Hilda herself, "whose life was a bright example to all who desired to live well," died and was buried here, but her bones were afterwards taken to Glastonbury. The dust of her successor, however—that Princess Elfleda whom Oswy dedicated to the religious life when he defeated Penda—lies somewhere very near this spot, within the abbey church itself, with that of the king her father, and her mother, Queen Eanfled. And down there on the slope, where the old cross stands, was the graveyard of the monks and in it the grave of CÆdmon.

In the ninth century came the sons of Lothbroc the Dane, Hinguar and Hubba, "men of terrible obstinacy and unheard-of valour." Flying the invincible standard which their sisters had made with their own hands, they landed on this coast and utterly destroyed the monastery of Streaneshalch.

For two hundred years this spot lay desolate. Then Reinfrid the soldier saw it, and was "pricked to the heart." He became a monk of Evesham, and after long years came back to Streaneshalch—by that time also called "Hwiteby"—to carry on the traditions of the past. He began the work of raising the new abbey on the site of the old; but it was those who came after him who built that early English chancel, and carved the lilies of the north transept, and made the decorated window through which we see the church, and the bluff headlands, and the white teeth of the North Sea for ever biting at the cliff.

There is no need to return to the town, for we can join the high-road to Scarborough at a point not far from here. By going a few miles out of the direct route we may see another of the sheltered bays that make this coast so beautiful; the bay where long ago, it is said, a fleet of fishing-boats was always ready to carry Robin Hood and his merry men to safety. Robin Hood's Butts, on the further side of the bay, are supposed to have been used as targets for his bowmen by that "most kind and obliging robber," as a sixteenth-century writer calls him. A long, steep hill leads down into the little town, which lies on the northern side of the crescent bay; the old town with its red houses clustered in the shelter of the cliff, its walls washed by the spray; the new town higher up the slope. There, below us, is the quay where John Wesley so often preached. It was there that he received—not without seeing the humour of it—the sailor's remonstrance against the theory that the fear of death could only be overcome by the fear of God. The sailor evidently felt that his reputation was at stake.

This lower and most romantic part of Bay Town is far the most attractive, but even the upper town is not unpleasing, though it has several little hotels, and threatens to develop into a watering-place. There is a road that leads out of the valley on the further side, but it is extremely bad in every way, and it is practically imperative to return as we came.

Soon after regaining the high-road we climb slowly up to the moors. Looking back we can still see the cleft in the hills where Whitby's red houses are hidden, and the headlands beyond it, and the stately abbey on the cliff. Before us there is a run so entrancing, a feast of colour so deeply satisfying, that these moors of Cleveland must henceforward, I think, be the standard by which we appraise all moorland runs. The road lies visible in front of us for miles: at times so straight that the telegraph wires are foreshortened till the posts are hardly distinguishable one from another; at other times winding in serpentine curves into the far distance. On each side of us, from the wheels of the hurrying car to the horizon, stretches the heather. Here and there is a patch of bracken, now and then a strip of yellow grass; but it is heather that makes the landscape, that flings its imperial robes over the hills and nestles under the wayside stones, that satisfies the eye and rests the heart with its astonishing beauty. Miles of road fly under us; we glide up and we dart down; now we dip into a ferny dell and climb out of it again, now we cross a stony beck, now we pass a plantation of firs; but still the setting is heather, deep bell-heather and pale ling, purple and crimson and mauve, sweeping away till the colours are merged in blue. Bluest of all is the sea, which appears now and then in a triangle of sapphire at the end of a glen. On the shores of that blue sea, a couple of miles to our left, is Ravenscar, which takes its name from the raven standard of the sons of Danish Lothbroc, who landed here when they came to devastate St. Hilda's abbey. Such at least is the tradition.

Gradually, and most reluctantly, we leave these shining heights for the lower world. The heather gives way to fields; the road is again bounded by respectable stone walls. We pass Claughton, then run down a steep hill between trees. Beyond these fir-trees, which rise up like walls on each side of the road, Scarborough appears—a dim mass of red blurred with smoke—and its castle lifted high above it on the headland.

"The toune stondith hole on a slaty clife," says Leland, "and shoith very fair to the se side." How very fair this place must have been one can easily imagine, when there was nothing here but the picturesque town of a Tudor day, and the "exceding goodly larg and strong castelle on a stepe rok," and the "paroche chirch of our Lady joyning almost to the castelle," and the "3 howsis of freres, grey, blake, and white," and the sea-wall made by Richard III., "now yn ruine by the se rage," and the "peere whereby socour is made for shippes," which, when Leland saw it, was "sore decayid." The town was partly walled then, too, and had two gates, one "meatley good," and one "very base." Only one or two of all these things are left, and even they are now as sore decayed as was the pier of Henry VIII.'s time. Yet Scarborough is still exceeding fair; so fair that it overcomes all one's prejudices against popular watering-places; fair even in spite of huge hotels and a beach black with people, and rows of ice-cream stalls, and braying bands, and hoarse hurdy-gurdies, and all kinds of music. It is built at the junction of two bays, between which the castle juts out on "a rock of wonderful height and bigness, inaccessible by reason of steep craggs almost on every side." Into both of these bays the North Sea sweeps, even upon the calmest day, in mighty curves of frothing surf. Below the castle is a little sheltered harbour, where a crowd of fishing-boats and smacks is protected from the "se rage" by breakwaters. Quite lately a wide road with an embankment has been built from bay to bay round the base of the castle promontory. Those who have loved the rough rocks that once were here feel naturally that this new drive spoils the beauty of the place. But, after all, Scarborough is not designed for lovers of wild nature. The mischief was done here long ago. The new drive is a boon to thousands who have to take their pleasure in bath-chairs, and in this place of esplanades and lawn-tennis court and smart clothes a little more artificiality is no great grievance.

From very early days this rock has been fortified. In the Heimskringla, I believe, those who can may read how Harald the Norseman landed near the strong fortress of Skardaburg, and how he and his men climbed the hill behind the town and made a mighty bonfire; then, with pitchforks, flung the burning faggots down among the wooden houses. "There the Northmen killed many people." The present castle was originally built by William le Gros, one of the heroes of the Battle of the Standard, who "increased the natural strength of the place by a very costly work." Henry III. in his fear of his barons ordered it to be destroyed, and when its owner demurred came to destroy it himself. When he saw the costly work, however, he bethought him of another destiny for it. He made it a little stronger and kept it himself.

Scarborough Castle has never yielded except to guile or famine. When Piers Gaveston, the silly favourite of a silly king, took refuge here from the barons who were tired of his wit and his insulting nicknames, it was famine that made him surrender himself and his ill-gotten goods—crown jewels and all—to Warwick, "the Black Dog," and Pembroke, "the Jew." The great Douglas, by the English named the "Black" and by the Scots the "Good," the guardian of the Bruce's heart and the hero of seventy fights, attacked Scarborough Castle in vain; and more than two hundred years later Robert Aske and his Pilgrims of Grace, though they took the town, failed to make any impression whatever upon the fortress. There was a certain market-day in Mary's reign, however, when a party of peasants strolled up this castle hill, and without any ado were allowed to pass with their wares between those round towers which we still may see, and over the two draw-bridges, and past the keep into the castle bailey. Perhaps the sentinels were a little surprised at the number of peasants who came to sell butter and eggs that day, but they were certainly more surprised when they saw their castle in the hands of Thomas Stafford and the rest of the smocked rebels. The masquerade cost Stafford his life, and did his cause no good at all.

Twice again was Scarborough Castle attacked, both times in the Civil War, both times by the army of the Parliament. It was during the first of these sieges that the church—the "paroche chirch joyning almost to the castelle"—lost its chancel. There are still gaunt fragments of it standing like pillars in the churchyard, as we may see. The choir was turned into a battery, but received more hurt than it gave before the castle yielded at last to starvation so terrible that some of the garrison were carried out in sheets. Then a Parliament-man was put in as governor, but as he shortly afterwards declared for the king the siege began again. The Parliament took no more risks. When they had retaken it, and dealt with it as their manner was, Scarborough Castle was no longer very redoubtable.

Its state of disrepair was a cause of much discomfort to poor George Fox a few years later; for this dilapidated building was one of his many prisons, and he found it far from weather-proof. The home-made suit of leather that impressed Carlyle so much—"the one continuous including case"—must have been worn out by this time, I think, for the wetness of his clothes was one of the great Quaker's most constant afflictions. When the smoky chimney prompted him to tax the Roman Catholic governor with sending him to Purgatory he was put into a room that had no fireplace at all. "Being to the sea-side," he says of it, "and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter." Here he received distinguished visitors, and argued about the Pope's infallibility with as much spirit as ever.

The maimed church that stands below the castle on the slope is not now so imposing as once it was, but it is still a fine building and has four chantries. In its shadow lies Anne BrontË. From the road leading to the castle gate, at a point near the fountain, one may see by looking over the wall of the churchyard the upright stone that bears her name. When she was dying, her sister Charlotte, with the desperate hope of those who despair, brought her to Scarborough, whose bay and headlands gave her the last pleasure she had. "It made her happy," wrote Charlotte, "to see Scarborough and its bay once more.... Our lodgings are pleasant, as Anne sits at the window she can look down on the sea."

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