The Bayfair Newspaper - Robin Hoods Bay
Heritage & History of Robin Hood's Bay
Heritage & History of Robin Hood's Bay
By Robin Lidster, Local Historian
To learn more about Robin Hood's Bay's fascinating history, why not visit the little local MUSEUM run entirely by volunteers.
More details on the Museum Website at museum.rhbay.co.uk
Fylingdales also has a thriving Local History Group. Find more about it at history.rhbay.co.uk
Robin Hood’s Bay, with its narrow streets and quaint cottages and houses, is one of the most picturesque and far-famed villages on the English coastline. Situated on the Yorkshire coast, between Whitby and Scarborough, the old village nestles in a narrow ravine at the edge of a wide sweeping bay, which is bounded on the north by Bay Ness and on the south by the lofty cliffs of Ravenscar.
The name of the village has been traced back to the time of Henry VIII, whose topographer John Leyland, described it as a small fishing town with 20 boats. There have been many theories put forward as to the origin of the name, but most are based on folklore, not fact. Some say that the famous outlaw came here, but documentary proof is wanting. Folklore tells us that Robin Hood kept a couple of boats here, so that, if things got “too hot” for him in Sherwood Forest, he could escape to the continent. Whatever the facts, the place itself is rich in folklore and legend, which have in no small way helped to spread its fame abroad.
FISHING
For centuries Robin Hood’s Bay remained a small fishing village but the opening of the Scarborough & Whitby in 1885 brought about extensive physical and social changes which saw the demise of the fishing industry and the rise of the tourist industry in the first half of the twentieth century.
TOURISM
Robin Hood’s Bay had been recognised as a quaint and attractive place for the tourist and visitor for over 150 years. In 1820 Matthew Galtry wrote of the Bay in his Scarborough Guide – “It is often visited by strangers attracted by the fame of the alum works in its neighbourhood, and the peculiarity of its grotesque appearance. The road to it is by no means good for carriages, on this account therefore and also from its distance, it is usually visited by gentlemen only”!
In earlier times the village and the surrounding area of Fylingdales, because of its geographical isolation and poor roads, was very much a closed community. Many of the inhabitants were direct descendants of the original Viking raiders who settled here to farm and fish. For practically all its needs the community was entirely self-sufficient. Eventually the village grew in size and became a more important place than either Whitby or Scarborough. It even figured on an old Dutch chart of 1586, which showed the village marked with a compass course and distance from Rotterdam.
Fishing was the most important industry and Matthew Galtry noted that – “The quantity of fish which is dried at Robin Hood’s Bay, as well for home consumption as for exportation, is surprising. The fronts of its houses and the surface of its paddocks are often covered by them as they are spread to dry”. The industry was then at its height with 45 boats and 130 fishermen.
Later, despite poor communication, the tourists increasingly ventured into the Bay. In 1798 Thomas Hinderwell wrote in his History and Antiquities of Scarborough that “the road to it is stony and uneven over a dreary barren moor and the hill at Stoupebrow is impractical for a carriage. On descending this hill from the moor to the sands at Robin Hood’s bay the road passes the Alum works where the curiosity of the traveller is gratified with a view of these immense mountains of alum-stone from which the salt is extracted; and the interior works are worthy of observation. The road from the Alum works to the village is along the sandy beach close under a high steep cliff to which the sea flows as the tide advance, and the passage is unsafe except there be a spacious area of sand uncovered by the water, or the tide is receding.”
Old prints and engravings show the village perched on an astoundingly high cliff and it is generally accepted that this is, to a large extent, the artist’s romantic exaggeration. However in 1780, part of King Street, which was then the main road down into the village, fell together with about 22 cottages on the seaward side, down the cliff and into the sea. It is interesting to record that Thomas Hinderwell wrote in 1798, that “the village once made a grotesque appearance, the houses being strangely scattered over the face of a steep cliff and some of them hanging in an aweful manner on the projecting ledges of the precipice. But this place has lately sustained a great alteration by the falling of the Cliff in consequence of which the projecting houses and the pavement of the principal street as far as the fronts of the houses on the opposite side are ruined and a new road has been made from the landing place throughout the interior part of the Town. As Thomas Hinder, one of the earliest local historians, was born in 1744 it is likely that he had visited it before the cliff fall of 1780 and that this description is one taken from personal observation and not from an old print.
Undoubtedly losing much of its 'grotesque appearance' the village nevertheless continued to attract visitors and in 1847 in Theakstons Guide to Scarborough a 'lively tourist' described Robin Hood's Bay as follows - "No place of human abode can be conceived more wild in its appearance than this village, where the tidy little edifices of the fishermen are perched, like the nests of seagulls, among the cliffs.
The communication from one street to another, in some places, is so entirely cut off, that access is obtained by a plank bridge thrown over a gully. Every individual dwelling is characteristic of the neatness of a seafaring proprietor - him whom early habit has taught the true principles of the economy of space and to whom the contrast of rough and perilous hours abroad the more endears the delights of home".
Shipwrecks and strandings were a common occurrence in this area, largely due to the treacherous rocks, strong tidal currents, thick fogs and north-easterly storms which battered the coast in the winter months. A rescue boat had been provided by the local residents for decades but an official Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboat was installed here in 1881. The first RNLI lifeboat was the 'Ephraim and Hannah Fox' which was superseded by the 'Mary Ann Lockwood' in 1902. The Robin Hood's Bay lifeboat station was open for 50 years, closing in 1931 when it was found that the motorised Whitby lifeboat could provide better cover than the local rowing lifeboat.
In 1885 the opening of the railway brought about many changes not the least of which was the building of the Mount Pleasant Estate at the top of Bay Bank. In 1894 fifty-two plots of land were advertised as being 'splendid sites close to the sea for the erection of superior Villa Residences or High Class Boarding or Lodging Houses'. Many were so developed as can be seen today but some also became homes for retired master mariners, many of whom aspired to a 'superior' house, with more space, at the top of the Bank.
Slowly life in the village changed, although by comparison with other parts of the country which had been transformed by the industrial revolution, it was an almost imperceptible change. Many thousands of visitors came by the railway, and provided another source of income at a time when the fishing industry was well into decline in the village. By 1914 there were only two main families still fishing out of the Bay. The growth of offshore fishing with trawlers and other powered craft from Whitby, and the lack of a harbour suitable for such boats, made fishing from the local cobles unprofitable. The First World War took away many able-bodied men and reduced the tourist trade. Families moved away and cottages fell into disrepair and decay and the village itself declined. Somehow the community and its spirit survived and, despite economies and hardship there was optimism for better times to come.
Eventually conditions improved and the tourists and visitors came back in even greater numbers, not only to visit but to buy up empty and derelict cottages to use as holiday homes. These were carefully restored and preserved, many in a sympathetic manner which revived the historic atmosphere of the old village. Perhaps if it was not for this many of the cottages in the old village would have been allowed to crumble into the sea and Robin Hood's Bay would just be a memory and a few photographs and old picture postcards, and not, as it is now, a thriving community with a very tangible history.
Eventually conditions improved and the tourists and visitors came back in even greater numbers, not only to visit but to buy up empty and derelict cottages to use as holiday homes. These were carefully restored and preserved, many in a sympathetic manner which revived the historic atmosphere of the old village. Perhaps if it was not for this many of the cottages in the old village would have been allowed to crumble into the sea and Robin Hood's Bay would just be a memory and a few photographs and old picture postcards, and not, as it is now, a thriving community with a very tangible history.
Robin Lidster, April 1998
Bayfair -