Old and New Filey—The Ravine—Filey Brig—Breaking Waves—Ragged Cliffs—Prochronic Gravel—Gristhorp Bay—Insulated Column—Lofty Cliffs—Fossil Plants—Red Cliff—Cayton Bay—Up to the Road—Bare Prospect—Cromwell Hotel and Oliver’s Mount—Scarborough—The Esplanade—Watering-Place Phenomena—The Cliff Bridge—The Museum—The Spa—The Old Town—The Harbour—The Castle Rock—The Ancient Keep—The Prospect—Reminiscences: of Harold Hardrada; of Pembroke’s Siege; of the Papists’ Surprise; of George Fox; of Robin Hood—The One Artilleryman—Scarborough Newspapers—Cloughton—The Village Inn, and its Guests—Tudds and Pooads.

Here at Filey you begin to see a special characteristic of these sea-side resorts;—the contrast between the new and old—the nineteenth century looking proudly across a narrow debatable ground at the sixteenth and seventeenth, putting even still earlier periods out of countenance. Were it not for its churches, the olden time would on occasions be made to feel ashamed of itself.

A breezy commanding outlook in front; a large handsome church, with low square tower, in the rear; a few shops trying to reconcile themselves to the new order of things while supplying the wants of fifteen hundred inhabitants; more than a few true to the old order, and here and there behind the dim panes, eggs of sea-birds, and shells, and marine stores, in the literal sense; and two or three quiet-looking, respectable inns, open to visitors whom the style of the Royal Hotel intimidates; the new town on the south, and a wooded ravine on the north; and such is old Filey.

Into this ravine I descended from the church. Heavy rain had fallen nearly all night, and the paths were so sticky and slippery, that I wondered so pretty a spot, so capable with bushes and trees and a little brook of contributing to recreation, should not be better kept. There is no lack of material for solid paths in the neighbourhood; but judging from appearances the ravine gets none of it. The path follows the course of the brook, and brings you out upon a beach where fishing-boats, and nets, and lobster-pots, and heaps of ballast, and a smoky fire, and fishy refuse and a smell of tar, and sturdy men and women, make up divers pictures for the eye, and odours for the nostrils.

As, on approaching Flamborough, we saw the chalk begin to appear at the base of the cliff, so here we see a stratum of sandstone slanting up beneath the clay, rising higher towards the northern horn of the bay, and thence stretching out for three furlongs into the sea, forming the remarkable reef known as Filey Brig. Camden describes it as “a thin slip of land, such as the old English called File; from which the little village Filey takes its name.” We may suppose that the cliff once projected as far, sheltering an indentation so deep that Ptolemy might well call it the well-havened bay; though on this particular there are different opinions among the learned. Even now, stripped of its cap of clay, the reef forms a natural breakwater, of which the effect is best seen in the quiet of the small vessels at anchor behind it.

I was fortunate in the time, for a strong north wind was blowing, and the great waves, checked in their career, dashed headlong against the stony barrier, and broke into little mountains of foam, bursting up here and there in tall white intermittent jets as from a geyser; here one solid surge tumbling over another, mingling with rush and roar in a wide drift of spume; there flinging up gauzy whiffs of spray as if mermaids in frolic were tossing their veils. So mighty were the shocks at times as to inspire a feeling of insecurity in one who stood watching the magnificent spectacle.

You can walk out to the end of the reef, and get good views of Scarborough, about six miles distant in one direction, and away to Flamborough on the other. The floor is generally level, interrupted in places by great steps, channels, and boles; and by huge blocks of many tons’ weight scattered about, testifying mutely to the tremendous power of the sea.

It is a wild scene, and wilder beyond the point, where the whole beach is strewn with broken lumps, and ledge succeeds to ledge, now high, now low, compelling you to many an up-and-down, stooping under a rude cornice, or scrambling over a slippery ridge. In places the cliff overhangs threateningly, or, receding, forms an alcove where you may sit and feast your eye with the wondrous commotion, and your ear with the thundering chorus of many waters.

The upper stratum of clay is worn by the twofold action of rain and spray into singularly fantastic forms, and where it has been deeply excavated, there, kept in by the rim of stone, lies a salt-water pool so bright and pellucid that the temptation to bathe therein is irresistible. I thought to get round to Gristhorp Bay, but came presently to a recess where the breakers rushing half way up the cliff barred all further progress. To lean against the rocky wall and feel it throb with the shock within the shower of spray, produced an almost painful emotion; and it seemed to me that the more tumultuous the sea the better did it harmonize with a promontory so rugged and grim.

I retraced my steps to a stair that zigzags up the cliff on the inner side of the point. Near this certain visitors have cut their initials in the hard rock floor, of such dimensions that you can only imagine a day must have been spent in the task with mallet and chisel. Vain records! The sea will wash them out some day. When on the summit I was struck more than before by the contrast between the rage and uproar on the outside of the ridge, and the comparative calm inside; nor was it easy to leave a view to which, apart from all the features of the shore, the restless sea added touches of the sublime, wherein wrought fascination. And all the while men, looking like pigmies in the distance, were groping for crabs along each side of the far-stretching reef.

A little way north of the point a rustic pavilion standing in a naked garden indicates where the visitor will find a jutting buttress whence to contemplate the scene below. More exposed on this side, the cliff is more cut up and broken in outline, jutting and receding in rugged ledges, and in every hollow rests one of those limpid pools, so calm and clear that you can see the creeping things moving between the patches of weed at the bottom. And the beach is thickly strewn with boulders of a size which perhaps represents the gravel of the “prochronic” era.

The elevation increases as we advance, and by-and-by looking round on Filey, we see how it lies at the mouth of a broad vale which it requires no great effort of imagination to believe may have been an estuary at some very remote period, near to the time

And far as you can see inland the prospect is bare, even to the distant hills and wolds which loom large and mountainous through the hazy atmosphere.

Now the cliff shows bands of colour—brown, gray, and ochre, and the lower half capped by a green slope forms a thick projecting plinth to the perpendicular wall above. Scarborough begins to be visible in detail, and soon we descend into Gristhorp Bay, where rough walking awaits us. At its northern extremity stands an insulated columnar mass, somewhat resembling the Cheesewring, on a rude pedestal shaped by the waves from the rocky layers. Situate about fifty yards from the point, it marks the wear of the cliff from which it has been detached, while the confused waste of rocks left bare by the ebb suggests ages of destruction prior to the appearance of the stubborn column.

The cliffs are of imposing height, nearly three hundred feet: a formidable bulwark. It is heavy walking along their base, but as compensation there are strata within reach in which you may find exhaustless deposits of fossil plants, giant ferns, and others. And so the beach continues round Red Cliff into Cayton Bay, where another chaos of boulders will try your feet and ability to pick your way. To vary the route, I turned up at Cayton Mill, past the large reservoir from which Scarborough is supplied with water, along the edge of the undercliff to the high road, leaving Carnelian Bay unvisited. At the hill-top you come suddenly upon a wide and striking prospect—a great sweep of hilly country on one hand, on the other the irregular margin of the cliffs all the way to the town, and a blue promontory far beyond the castle bluff, which marks our course for the morrow.

The road is good and the crops look hopeful; but the hedgerows are scanty and stunted, and not improved by the presence of a few miserable oaks; nor do the plantations which shelter the farm-houses and stingy orchards appear able to rejoice though summer be come. In some places, for want of better, the banks are topped by a hedge of furze. On the left of the road, long offshoots from the bleak uplands of the interior terminate with an abrupt slope, presenting the appearance of artificial mounds. Another rise, and there is Scarborough in full view, crowding close to the shore of its bay, terminated by the castle rock, the most striking feature. Bright, showy houses scattered on the south and west indicate the approaches to the fashionable quarter, and of those farthest from the sea you will not fail to notice the Cromwell Hotel—a new building in Swiss-like style of architecture, at the foot of Oliver’s Mount. The Mount—so named from a tradition that the Protector planted his cannon there when besieging the castle—is another of those truncated offshoots, six hundred feet in height, and the summit, which is easily accessible and much visited, commands an interesting prospect. You see the tree-tops in the deep valley which divides the New Town from the Old, and rearwards, broken ground sprinkled with wood, imparting some touches of beauty to the western outskirts.

Then, turning to the right, you come upon a stately esplanade, and not without a feeling of surprise after a few days’ walking by yourself. For here all is life, gaiety, and fashion. Long rows of handsome houses, of clean, light-coloured sandstone, with glittering windows and ornamental balconies, all looking out on the broad, heaving sea. In front, from end to end, stretches a well-kept road, where seats, fixed at frequent intervals, afford a pleasurable resting-place; and from this a great slope descends to the beach, all embowered with trees and shrubs, through which here and there you get a glimpse of a gravelled path or the domed roof of a summer-house. And there, two hundred feet below, is the Spa—a castellated building protected by a sea-wall, within which a broad road slopes gently to the sands. You see visitors descending through the grove for their morning draught of the mineral water, or assisting the effect by a ‘constitutional’ on the promenade beneath; while hundreds besides stroll on the sands, where troops of children under the charge of nursemaids dig holes with little wooden spades. And here on the esplanade elegant pony barouches, driven by natty little postilions, are starting every few minutes from the aristocratic looking hotel to air gay parties of squires and dames around the neighbourhood. And turning again to the beach, there you see rows of bathing-machines gay with green and red stripes, standing near the opening of the valley, and now and then one starts at a slow pace laden with bathers to meet the rising tide. And beyond these the piers stretch out, and the harbour is crowded with masts, and two steamers rock at their moorings, waiting for ‘excursionists:’ the whole backed by the houses of the Old Town rising picturesquely one above the other, and crowning the castle heights.

Nearly an hour passed before I left that agreeable resting-place, whence you get the best view of Scarborough and its environment. Of all the strollers I saw none go beyond what appeared to be a conventional limit; Nature without art was perhaps too fatiguing for them. In the whole of my walk along the coast, I met but two, and they were young men, who had ventured a few miles from head-quarters for a real walk on the cliffs.

A bridge, four hundred feet long and seventy-five high, offers a level crossing for foot passengers from the esplanade to the opposite side of the deep valley above mentioned, on payment of a toll. It is at once ornamental and convenient, saving the toil of a steep ascent and descent, and combining the advantage of an observatory. From the centre you get a complete view of the bay, one which the eye rests on with pleasure, though you will hardly agree with a medical author, that it is a “Bay of Naples.” In the other direction, you look up the wooded valley, and down upon the Museum, a Doric rotunda, built by the members of the Scarborough Philosophical Society, for the preservation of geological specimens. The contents are admirably classified, rocks and fossils in their natural order; amid them rests the skeleton of an ancient British chief; and near the entrance you may see the clumsy oak coffin in which it was found, about twenty-five years ago, in a barrow at Gristhorp.

Descend into the valley, and you will find pleasure in the sight of the bridge, and miles of water seen through the light and graceful arches. Then take a walk along the sands, and look up at the leafy slope, crowned by the esplanade, and you will commend the enterprise which converted an ugly clay cliff into a hanging wood. And enterprise is not to stop here: Sir Joseph Paxton, as I heard, has been consulted about the capabilities of the cliff to the south. Some residents, however, think that Scarborough is already overdone.

In a small court within the Spa you may see the health-giving waters flowing from two mouths, known from their position as North Well and South Well. The stream is constant, and, after all the wants of the establishment are supplied, runs across the sand to the sea. The water has a flavour of rusty iron and salt, differing in the two wells, although they are but a few feet apart; and the drinkers find it beneficial in cases of chronic debility and indigestion with their remorseless allies.

The contrast is more marked between New and Old than at Filey. There is, however, a good, respectable look about the streets of the Old Town, and signs of solid business, notwithstanding the collections of knick-knackery and inharmonious plate-glass. From the broad main street you descend by a narrow crooked street—from old through oldest to the harbour, where old anchors, old boats, old beams and buttresses dispute possession with the builders of new boats, who make the place noisy with their hammering. Here as a Yorkshireman would say, were assembled all the ‘ragabash’ of Scarborough, to judge by what they said and did. Boys and men were fishing from the pier-head under the lighthouse, watched by grizzly old mariners, who appeared to have nothing better to do than to sit in the sun; children paddled in the foamy shallows of the heavy breakers; carts rumbled slowly to and from the coal brigs, followed by stout fellows carrying baskets of fish; a sight which might have shamed the dissolute throng into something like industry.

Enclosed by the three piers which form the harbour stands a detached pile of masonry, seemingly an ancient breakwater—all weather-beaten, weedy, and grass-grown, with joints widely gaping, looking as if it had stood there ever since Leland’s day—a remarkable object amid the stir of trade and modern constructions, but quite in harmony with the old pantile-roofed houses that shut in the port. Among these you note touches of the picturesque; and your eye singles out the gables as reminiscences of the style which, more than any other, satisfies its desire.

But let us go and look down on the scene from the castle rock. The ascent is steep, yet rich in recompense. St. Mary’s church, near the summit, and the fragments of old walls standing amidst the graves, remind us of its former dimensions, and of the demolitions it suffered during the siege. And there rises in massive strength, to a height of ninety feet, a remnant of the castle keep—an imposing ruin full before us, as we cross the drawbridge, pass under the barbican, and along the covered way, to the inner court. But the court is a large, rough pasture, fenced on the north and east, where the cliff is bare and perpendicular, and towards the town shut in by a range of old wall, pierced by a few embrasures, some low buildings, and the remains of an ancient chapel. There is no picturesque assemblage of ruins; but little indeed besides the shattered keep, and that appears to best effect from without. Near the chapel, Our Lady’s Well, a spring famous from time immemorial, bubbles silently up in a darksome vault.

Northwards the view extends along the rugged coast to the Peak, a lofty point that looks down on Robin Hood’s Bay, and to hazy elevations beyond Whitby. To get a sight of the town you must return to the barbican, where you can step up on the wall and securely enjoy a bird’s-eye view: from the row of cannon which crown the precipice sheer down to the port and away to the Spa, all lies outspread before the curious eye.

A great height, as we have already proved, appears to be favourable to musing, especially when the sun shines bright. And here there is much to muse about. Harold Hardrada, when on his way to defeat and death at Stamford Brig, landed here, and climbing the “Scarburg” with his wild sea-rovers, lit a huge bonfire, and tossed the blazing logs over the cliff down upon the town beneath. The burg, or fortress, was replaced in the reign of Stephen by a castle, which, renewed by Henry II., became one of the most important strongholds of the kingdom. Piers Gavestone defended it vigorously against the Earl of Pembroke, but was starved into a surrender, with what result we all know. The Roman Catholics attempted it during their Pilgrimage of Grace, but were beaten off. In 1554, however, when Queen Mary was trying to accomplish the Pilgrims’ work, a son of Lord Stafford and thirty confederates, all disguised as rustics, sauntered unsuspected into the outer court, where on a sudden they surprised the sentries, and immediately admitting a reserve party carrying concealed arms, they made themselves masters of the place. The success of this surprise is said to have given rise to the adage “Scarborough warning; a word and a blow, and the blow first.” But after three days the Earl of Westmoreland regained possession, and Mr. Stafford underwent the same sharp discipline as befel Edward the Second’s favourite. At length came the struggle between Prerogative and People, and in the triumph of the right the castle was well-nigh demolished; and since then, time and tempest have done the rest.

Among the unfortunates who suffered imprisonment here, George Fox, the aboriginal Quaker, has left us a most pathetic account of his sufferings. Brought hither from Lancaster Castle, he was put into a chamber which he likened to purgatory for smoke, into which the rain beat, and after he had “laid out about fifty shillings” to make it habitable, “they removed me,” he writes in his Journal, “into a worse room, where I had neither chimney nor fireplace. This being to the sea-side 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. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two.” For more than a year did the resolute Peacemaker endure pain and privation, and vindicate his principles on this tall cliff; and when three years later, in 1669, he again went preaching in Yorkshire, he revisited Scarborough, and “the governor hearing I was come,” he writes, “sent to invite me to his house, saying, ‘surely I would not be so unkind as not to come and see him and his wife.’ So after the meeting I went up to visit him, and he received me very courteously and lovingly.”

Five hundred years earlier, and, as the ballad tells, the merry outlaw, Robin Hood, who

being a-weary of forest glades and fallow deer, exclaimed,

But though the “widow woman” in whose house “he took up his inn,” lent him a stout boat and willing crew, he caught no fish, and the master laughed at him for a lubber. However, two or three days later, he espied a ship of war sailing proudly towards them, and then it was the master’s turn to lament, for the French robbers spared no man. To him then Robin:

The castle is national property, and as the bluff affords a good site for offence and defence, a magazine and barracks for a company of men have been built. For all garrison, at the time of my visit, there was but one invalid artilleryman, who employs his leisure in constructing models of the ruins for sale along with bottles of ginger beer. He will talk to you about the nice water of Our Lady’s Well; the cavern in the cliff, where the officers once dined; of the cannon balls that Cromwell sent across from Oliver’s Mount; about the last whale caught on the shore, and about the West Indies, where he lost his health; but he remembers little or nothing of Piers Gavestone or George Fox, and is not quite sure if he ever heard that Robin Hood went a-privateering. His duties, he told me, were not heavy; he did not even lock the gate at night, because folk came very early in the morning to fetch their cows from the pasture.

Since then, that is, in the autumn of 1857, the rains occasioned a landslip, which nearly obliterated the cavern; a whale thirty feet long was caught floundering in the shallows; and on Seamer Moor, about three miles distant, ancient gold and silver rings and ornaments, beads and broken pottery, and implements of bronze and iron and a skeleton, were found on excavating a chalky knoll.

Of course, a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants must have its newspapers. The Scarborough Gazette is a curiosity for its long list of visitors, filling sometimes two pages. A cheap paper—the title of which I have lost—was a curiosity to me in another way, for I could not have believed that Yorkshire folk would read anything so stupid as the wordy columns therein passed off for politics.

The shadows were lengthening towards the east when, after satisfying myself with another look at the coast to the north, I took the road for Cloughton, leaving the town by the north esplanade, where Blenheim-terrace shows the sober style of the first improvements. Many visitors, however, prefer the view from those plain bay-windows to that seen from the stately houses to the south.

Cloughton is a small quiet village, with a Red Lion to match, where you may get good rustic fare—cakes, bacon, and eggs—and a simple chamber. The landlord, a patriarch of eighty-five, still hale, and active, who sat warming his knees at the turf fire, opened his budget of reminiscences concerning Scarborough. The change from what it was to what it is, was wonderful. He went there at election times. Had once been to vote at York, years ago, “when there was a hard fight betuxt a Milton and a Lascelles.” Had never been to London, but his niece went up to the Great Exhibition. While we talked, in came a shabby-looking fellow with a six days’ beard, for a pint of beer. He had been trout-fishing all day on the moors—one of his means of living. He stayed but a few minutes, and as he went out the patriarch said, “He’s a roughish one to look at, but he can make powetry.” It was too late to call him back, or I might perhaps have got a specimen.

Then came in the rustics in twos and threes for their evening pint and pipe, most of them preferring hard porter to the ale, which was really good. Not one had a complaint to make of hard times: wages were one and sixpence a day, and meat, and good meat, too—beef and mutton and pies—as much as they could eat. They didn’t want to emigrate; Yorkshire was quite good enough for them. While talking to them and listening to their conversation among themselves, my old conviction strengthened that the rural folk are not the fools they are commonly taken to be. Choose such words as they are familiar with—such as John Bunyan uses—and you can make them understand any ordinary subject and take pleasure in it. And how happy they are when you can suggest an illustration from something common to their daily life! I would have undertaken to give an hour’s lecture on terrestrial magnetism even, to that company; and not one should have wished it shorter. And once having broken through their crust of awkwardness, you find them possessed of a good fund of common sense, quick to discern between the plausible and what they feel to be true. Flattering speeches made at hay-homes and harvest-homes are taken for what they are worth; and the sunburnt throng are everywhere ready to applaud the sentiment conveyed in a reaper’s reply to a complimentary toast:

One of the party, lively enough to have lived when the island was “merry England,” hearing that I intended to walk through Bay Town on the morrow, said, laughingly, “You’ll find nought but Tudds and Pooads down there;” meaning that Todd and Poad were the prevalent names.