A Month in Yorkshire

The last mile of cliff, as you approach Bridlington is diversified by a pale chalky stratum, about four feet thick along the top. It dips down in places basin-like, and contrasts strangely with the clay.

Bridlington Quay, as the seaward part of the town is named, though situated at the very rear of the Head, is, as I saw on turning the last point, not safe from the sap and shock of the breakers. The cliff, sunken in places, exhibits the effect of landslips in rough slopes and ugly heaps. Two legs of the seat fixed at the corner overhang the edge and rest upon nothing, and you see that the remainder are doomed to follow, notwithstanding the numerous piles driven in for protection.

The two arms of the pier enclose a small harbour, one of the few places of refuge for vessels caught by easterly gales on the Yorkshire coast—a coast deficient in good and easily-accessible harbours. A chalybeate spring bursts from the cliff on the northern side; and near the middle of the port an artesian well throws up a constant stream, varying with the rise and fall of the tide. The noisy brook which you cross, on entering the principal street, has its sources in those remarkable springs which, known as ‘the Gipseys,’ gush out from the foot of the wolds.

Bridlington attracts numbers of that class of visitors for whom Hornsea is too quiet and Scarborough too gay. In fine weather, steamers arrive with pleasure parties from Hull and Whitby, Flamborough Head being the great attraction. The boatmen ask fifteen shillings a day for a boat to sail round the Head, and give you opportunity to peer into caverns, or to shoot seafowl should your desire be for “sport.” And besides their pay, the tough old fellows like to have a voice in provisioning the boat, resolute to demonstrate how much your pleasure depends on “laying in plenty of bottled porter.”

The church, situate in the town about half a mile from the Quay, was at one time as large and handsome as the minster of Beverley; but of late years the visitor has only been able to see the remains of beauty through grievous dilapidations, in which the hand of man was more implicated than the weather. Paul Jones is still held responsible for some of the mischief. Now, however, the work of restoration is commenced, and ere long the admirable details and proportions of the edifice will reappear.

Here it was that, attended by a convoy of seven Dutch vessels of war, commanded by Van Tromp, Queen Henrietta Maria landed in 1643; and there are people yet living who remember the terror inspired by the redoubtable privateer aforementioned, while the North-American colonies were battling for their liberties. On the 20th of September, 1779, a messenger came in hot haste from Scarborough to Bridlington with news that an enemy had been espied off the coast, and in the evening of the same day the Yankee squadron was in sight from Flamborough Head. Preparations were at once made to send the women and children into the interior; money and valuables were hastily packed, and some of the inhabitants, panic-stricken, actually fled. The drum beat to arms; the Northumberland militia, then quartered in the neighbourhood, were called out; and all the coasting-vessels bore up for Bridlington Bay, and crowded for protection into the little harbour. Scarcely a town or village on the Yorkshire coast but has its story of alarms and unwelcome visitations from the American privateers.

On the 24th the timid population witnessed a sea-fight from the cliffs. Jones, with the Bonhomme Richard, and the Pallas and Alliance frigates, intercepted the Serapis, of forty-four, and Countess of Scarbro’, of twenty-two guns, convoying a fleet of merchant-vessels, and at once commenced action. The two largest ships grappled, and fired into each other for two hours, the two frigates meanwhile sailing round, and doing their best to cripple the Englishman. The American at length struck; but only as a feint, for when the crew of the Serapis boarded, they fell into an ambush prepared for them, and suffered so much loss, that the Serapis hauled down her colours, and the Countess of Scarbro’ was taken by the Pallas. The victory, however, was dearly won: the Bonhomme Richard lost three hundred men in killed and wounded, and was so grievously cut up in her hull, that the next day she went to the bottom. Captain Pearson, of the Serapis, in his despatch to the Admiralty announcing the capture of his ship, had good reason to write, “I flatter myself with the hopes that their lordships will be convinced that she has not been given away.”

The scene of three of Montgomery’s sonnets is laid at Bridlington. Turn to the volume and read them, before you go farther.

CHAPTER VIII

What the Boarding-House thought—Landslips—Yarborough House—The Dane’s Dike—Higher Cliffs—The South Landing—The Flamborough Fleet—Ida, the Flamebearer—A Storm—A talk in a Limekiln—Flamborough Fishermen—Coffee before Rum—No Drunkards—A Landlord’s Experiences—Old-fashioned Honesty.

The party—four gentlemen and one lady—at the boarding-house where I tarried to dine, agreed unanimously that to pass a whole Sunday morning in walking, was especially blameworthy. Besides being wrong in itself, it was “setting such a bad example;” nor would they hear reason on the question. With them, indeed, it was no question: they quoted the fourth commandment, and that settled it. Any departure from that was decidedly wrong, if not sinful. And then, perhaps out of a benevolent desire for my spiritual welfare, they urged me to stay till the morrow, when I might join them in a boat-trip to the Head and help to fire guns at the seafowl. It surprised me somewhat to hear them discuss their project with as much animation as if they had not just administered a homily to me, or the day had not been Sunday. The possibilities of weather, the merits of cold pies, sandwiches, and lively bottled drinks, powder and shot moreover, and tidal contingencies, were talked about in a way that led me to infer there was nothing at all wrong in consuming the holy day with anticipations of pleasure to come in the days reckoned unholy. Then one of the party set off to walk to a village three miles distant; and presently, when I started for Flamborough, the other three accompanied me as far as the path along the cliff was easy to the foot. So I could only infer again that there is nothing wrong in short walks on a Sunday. It is simply the distance that constitutes the difference between good and evil. Some folk appear to believe that if they only sit under a pulpit in the morning, they have earned a dispensation for the rest of the day.

The cliffs now are sixty feet in height, broken by frequent slips in the upper stratum of clay, and numerous cracks running along the path marks the limits of future falls. One of the slips appeared to be but a few hours old, and the lumps, of all dimensions, with patches of grass and weeds sticking out here and there, lying in a great confused slope, suggested the idea of an avalanche of clay. Ere long you come to Yarborough House, a stately mansion standing embowered by trees about a furlong from the shore. Holding that an Englishman has an inherent right of way along the edge of his own country, I gave no heed to the usual wooden warning to trespassers, erected where the path strikes inland at the skirt of the grounds, and kept along the pathless margin of the cliff. Nothing appeared to be disturbed by my presence except a few rabbits, that darted as if in terror to their burrows. Once past the grounds you come into large fields, where the grain grows so close to the brink of the precipice, that you wonder alike at the thrift of the Yorkshire farmers, and the skill with which they drive their ploughs in critical situations.

As you proceed, the cliffs rise higher, interrupted in places by narrow gullies, one of which is so deep and the farther bank so high as to appear truly formidable, and shut out all prospect to the east. After a difficult scramble down, and a more difficult scramble up, you find yourself on the top of a ridge, which, stretching all across the base of the headland from sea to sea, along the margin of a natural ravine, remains a monument, miles in length, of the days

“When Denmark’s Raven soar’d on high,Triumphant through Northumbrian sky.”

It is the “Dane’s Dike,” a barrier raised by our piratical Scandinavian forefathers to protect their settlements on the great promontory. With such a fence, they had always a refuge to fall back upon where they could hold their own, and command the landing-places till more ships and marauders arrived with succours. As the eye follows the straight line of the huge grass-grown embankment, you will feel something like admiration of the resolute industry by which it was raised, and perhaps think of the fierce battles which its now lonely slopes must have once witnessed.

Still the cliffs ascend. Farther on I came to a broader and deeper ravine, at the mouth of which a few boats lay moored; and others hauled up on the beach, and coming nearer, I saw boat after boat lodged here and there on the slopes, even to the level ground above, where, judging from the number, the fleet found its rendezvous. It was curious to see so many keels out of their element, most of them gay with stripes of blue and red, and bearing the names of the wives and daughters of Flambro’. The little bay, however, known as the South Landing, is one of the two ports of Flamborough: the other, as we shall see after passing the lighthouse, is similar in formation—a mere gap in the cliffs. They might be called providential landing-places, for without them the fishermen of Flamborough would have no access to the sea, except by ladders down the precipice. As it is, the declivity is very steep; and it is only by hauling them up to every available spot, that room is found for the numerous boats.

Here it was that Ida, the Flamebearer, is supposed to have landed, when he achieved the conquest of Northumbria; and here the galleys of the Sea-Kings found a precarious shelter while the daring Northmen leapt on shore to overrun the land in later centuries, when tradition alone preserved the remembrance of the former invaders and their warlike deeds.

I was prowling hither and thither in the ravine, entertained with the Present while imagining the Past, when the clouds, grown every minute blacker since noon, let fall their burden with something like tropical vehemence. For some time there was no perceptible pause in the lightning or thunder, and against the accompanying rain an umbrella was but as gauze. I rushed into the arch of a neighbouring limekiln, and once in, was kept there two hours by the roaring storm. Presently two fishermen, speeding up from the landing, made for the same shelter, and of course, under the circumstances, we fraternised at once, and talked the time away.

Clean and well clad, they were favourable—and as I afterwards saw—not exceptional specimens of their class. In their opinion the Flamborough fishermen bear as good a character as any in Yorkshire—perhaps better. About seven years ago they all resolved to work but six days a week, and on no account to go to sea on Sundays. They held to their resolve, and, to the surprise of most, found themselves the better. They earn quite as much as before, if not more, and go to work with better spirit. During the herring season it is a common practice with them to put into Scarborough on Saturday evening, and journey home by rail for the Sunday, taking advantage of the very low fares at which return tickets are issued to fishermen. And as for diet, they take a good store of bread and meat, pies even, in their boats, seeing no reason why they should not live as well as their neighbours. A glass of rum was acceptable, especially in cold and blowing weather: but so far as they knew, there were very few fishermen who would not “choose hot coffee before rum any day.”

There was none of that drinking among fishermen now as there used to be formerly. You could find some in Flamborough “as liked their glass,” but none to be called drunkards. There is a national school in the village; but not so well attended as it might be, and perhaps would be if they had a better schoolmaster. The people generally had pretty good health, which is possibly the occasion why the last two doctors, finding time hang heavy on their hands, drank themselves to death. There is, or rather was in July, 1857, an opening for a doctor in Flamborough.

The rain still fell heavily when we left our shelter, and it kept on till past midnight. Luckily the village was not a mile distant, and there I took a comfortable chair by the kitchen fire of The Ship. The landlord corroborated all that the fishermen had told me, with the reservation that he found it difficult to clear his room of tipplers on Saturday night, although none could be set down as drunkards. At times he put on his clock ten minutes, to ensure a clearance before the Sunday morning, resolutely refusing to refill the glasses after twelve. The guests would go away growling out a vow never to return to such an inhospitable house; but not one kept the vow more than a fortnight. When, nineteen years ago, he determined not to open his house on Sunday to any but strangers who might chance to arrive from a distance, the village thought itself scandalized, and the other public-houses predicted his ruin. They were, however, mistaken. The Ship still flourishes; and the host and his family “find themselves none the worse for going to a place of worship, and keeping the house quiet one day in seven.”

“Sometimes,” he ended, “we don’t think to fasten the front door when we go to bed; but it’s all the same; nobody comes to disturb us.” Which may be taken as an indication that honesty has not yet abandoned Flamborough.

CHAPTER IX

Men’s and Women’s Wages—The Signal Tower—The passing Fleet—The Lighthouse—The Inland View—Cliff scenery—Outstretching Reefs—Selwick’s Bay—Down to the Beach—Aspect of the Cliffs—The Matron—Lessons in Pools—Caverns—The King and Queen—Arched Promontories—The North Landing—The Herring-Fishers—Pleasure Parties—Robin Lyth’s Hole—Kirk Hole—View across little Denmark—Speeton—End of the Chalk—Walk to Filey.

A fresh, bright morning succeeded the stormy night, and it was but a few hours old when, after a look at the old Danish tower at the west of the village, I walked across the fields to the lighthouse. A woman trudging in the same direction with a hoe on her shoulder said, after I had asked her a few questions, she wished she were a man, for then she would get nine shillings a week and her meat, instead of one shilling a day and feeding herself, as at present. However, ’twas better than nothing. Presently her daughter came up, a buxom maiden, wearing her bonnet in a way which saved her the affliction of shrugs and the trouble of tying. It was front behind: a fashion which leaves no part of the head exposed, shelters the poll, and looks picturesque withal. It prevails, as I afterwards noticed, among the rustic lasses everywhere.

As I passed the old stone tower near the coast-guard station, the signal-man was busy raising and lowering his flag, for a numerous fleet of coasting-vessels was running by to the southward, each telling its name as it came within signal distance. The man sends a daily list of the names to London for publication, whereby coal-merchants and others hear of cargoes on the way, and calculate the time of their arrival. It is a peculiarity of Flamborough Head, an enlivening one, that ships can keep so close in that the men on their decks are distinctly seen, and their voices heard by one standing on the cliff.

The lighthouse, a circular white tower, eighty-two feet in height, stands on the verge of the cliff, displaying inside and out all that admirable order and cleanliness characteristic of British lighthouses. There is no difficulty in obtaining admittance; you sign your name in a book, and are forthwith conducted up to the lantern by the chief or one of his aids. The light is revolving, alternately white and red, and can be seen at a distance of thirty miles. But here, elevated two hundred and fifty feet above the sea, you feel most interested in the prospect. No “shadowy pomp of woods” arrests the eye looking landwards, but a region bleak and bare in aspect rolling away to the distant wolds, the line of uplands which, sweeping round, approaches the coast about Scarborough. The village with its windmill, and the few farms that are in sight, look naked and comfortless: not an inviting territory for an invader given to the picturesque. But seawards, and along the rugged front of the cliffs, grandeur and variety exert their charm. Here the up-piled chalk flings out a bold perpendicular buttress, solid from base to summit; there the jutting mass is isolated by yawning cracks and chasms, and underneath, as we shall presently see, is fretted into fantastic shapes, pierced through and through, or worn into caverns by the headlong billows. In places a broken slope of rocky hummocks and patches of grass, weeds, and gravel descends, more or less abruptly, to the beach, opening a view of the long weed-blackened reefs that, stretching out from the Head, afford a measure of the amazing encroachments of the sea. Northwards, the bluff crowned by Scarborough Castle, backed by higher elevations, closes the view; to the south you have the low, fading coast of Holderness; and all the while brigs, ships, and schooners are sailing past, more than a hundred in sight, some of them so near that you fancy they will hardly escape the lurking points of the dark reef. One small vessel, the keeper told me, had touched the day before, and lay fast and helpless till, the weather being calm, she floated off by the succeeding tide. You can look down into Selwicks Bay, and see men and boys quarrying chalk, and donkeys laden with heavy panniers of the lumps, toiling painfully up the steep winding road which forms the only approach. The farther horn of the little bay is arched and tunnelled, and, taken with the waterfall plunging down in its rear and the imposing features of the points beyond, invites to further exploration.

The residents at the lighthouse enjoy an abundant supply of water from a spring within their enclosure: their garden produces cabbages and potatoes; the neighbours are friendly, and visitors numerous. Hence life is more cheerful to them than to the amphibious hermits who dwell at the Spurn.

While looking for a practicable descending-place, I noticed many tufts of thrift as thick with flowers as in an antiquated garden where the old favourites are still cherished.

“Even here hath Nature lavished hues, and scent,And melody; born handmaids of the ocean:The frowning crags, with moss and rock-flowers blent,Dazzle the eyes with sunlight, while the motionOf waves, the breezes fragrant from the sea,And cry of birds, combine one glorious symphony!”

The time—dead low water—being favourable for a stroll on the beach, I scrambled down a rough slope to the south of the lighthouse, and across the rougher beach to the rocks beyond the outmost point, where, turning round, I could view the cliffs in either direction. And a striking scene it is! A wild beach, as rugged with water-worn lumps of chalk as any lover of chaos could desire. Here the cliff jutting proudly, the white patches gleaming brightly where masses of chalk have recently fallen, and the harder portions presenting a smooth, marble-like appearance; there receding into the shade, and terminating in darksome hollows, the mouths of gullies and caverns; and everywhere broken up with buttresses, piers, and columnar projections, the bases of which are garnished with a belt of shelly incrustation, and a broad brown fringe of weed. Above, the white surface is varied by streaks and stains of yellow and green; and seafowl innumerable crowd on all the ledges, or wheel and dart in restless flight, as if proud to show their white wings to the sun.

The reef stretches out a quarter of a mile, as one may guess, worn here and there with channels narrow and deep, along which the water rolls with intermittent rush and roar, reminding the loiterer here in the slumberous July weather of tremendous energies lulled to repose. I walked round the Matron—an isolated pyramid of chalk—and patted her on the back; and strode from one little pool to another, taking an unscientific lesson in natural history while watching the animal and vegetable occupants, and those that seemed to be as much one as the other.

I picked up a fine specimen of the hermit crab, and proved the strength of local attachment: it would not be coaxed from its hermitage—the shell of a whelk. I saw a limpet give its shell half a rotation, then grow tall for an instant, and then shut itself snugly down upon the rock. At times, while I stood quite still, ‘ninnycocks,’ that is, young lobsters, would venture out from their crevices, and have a frolic in their weedy basin; but they would tolerate no intruder, and darted into undiscoverable retreats on my slightest movement. And the animated flowers that displayed their orange and crimson petals at the bottom of the basin were equally mistrustful, and shut themselves up if I did but put my hand in the water, even after they had looked on without winking at the gambols of the ninnycocks.

There are times when ignorance has a charm, and this was one of them. How much happier to sit and watch a crowd of weeds, a very forest in miniature, tenanted by creeping things innumerable, and to have your faculty of wonder excited as well as admiration while observing them in full liberty, than to come prepared to call one an ascidian, another an entomostracan, and so on, and to assign to each its place in the phycological handbook, or the zoological catalogue!

In some of the smallest and deepest caverns which curve as they enter the cliff, you get effects of cross lights from their inner extremity, and see the glistening of the walls, which, worn smooth by the water, appear to be varnished. In all the floor rises more or less rapidly; and in one, a hundred paces deep, the rush and roar of the surge outside comes only as a gentle murmur, and a slow drip-drip from the crevices has an impressive sound there in the gloom where the entrance cannot be seen.

I took advantage of the opportunity, and explored most of the openings, catching sight now and then of belemnites and other curious fossils in the chalk, wading at times knee-deep in weed, and scrambled round the bays on each side of the point, and failed not to salute the venerable King and Queen.

Having rambled about till the rising tide began to cut off the way round the promontories, and the crabbers came in from their raid on the reefs, I climbed the rough slope, and paced away for the North Landing. Beyond Selwicks Bay the cliff is more broken and cut up into romantic coves and bays, with confused landslips here and there, and in places the green turf rushing half way down masks the chalk; and everywhere are thousands of birds, with their ceaseless cry and clang. Isolated masses are numerous; and from one point I could count eight headlands, each pierced by an arch. And here the water, no longer stained with clay, shows green and bright along the base of the cliff, beautifully pellucid where it rolls over a bottom of chalk, contrasting strangely with darksome gulfs and broad beds of weed. And mingling with the cry of birds, there comes from time to time to your ear the noisy report of the guns, or the chant of the fishermen, as rocked on the swell, they sit watching their nets.

The North Landing is a gap similar to the South, but broader, and with an outlet wide enough to be described as a bay. Here I saw some sixty or eighty boats perched from top to bottom of the steep slope; and groups of fishermen with their families, men, women, and children, all busy with preparations for the herring fishery. While some sorted the nets, others lifted in big stones for ballast, or set up the masts, and others pushed their boats down to meet the tide, and all in high good humour; while all about there prevailed a strong fishy smell. And besides the fishermen, there were parties of young men with their guns embarking for a sporting cruise; some armed only with parasols and accompanied by ladies, setting off for a sail round the Head; for this is the chief port of Flamborough, and the North Star, a public-house at the top of the hill, is convenient for victual.

The advance of the tide prevented my seeing Robin Lyth’s Hole, a cavern on the eastern side of the Landing; named, as some say, after a certain smuggler who kept his unlawful merchandise therein; or to commemorate the name of a man who was caught in the cavern by the tide, and saved his life by clinging to the topmost ledge till the water fell. Another cavern is known as the Dovecote; another as Kirk Hole, and of this the tradition runs that it extends far underground to the village churchyard.