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 motion
Of 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.
I climbed up the western side of the gap, and continued my way along the cliffs, which maintain their elevation. Soon I came to the northern end of the Dike, a height of three hundred feet, and from the top beheld the whole territory of Little Denmark, and the sea all the way round to the lighthouse, and the southern end of the Dike. According to Professor Phillips, this remarkable bank was probably already in existence when the Danes landed: “perhaps earlier than the Anglian invasion,” he says; “perhaps it is a British work, like many other of the entrenchments on these anciently peopled hills.”
A mile farther, and the cliff rises to a height of more than four hundred feet. In some places the bank which encloses the fields is broad enough for a footpath; but you must beware of the landslips. The fences, which are troublesome to climb, project beyond the edge of the cliff to keep the cows, as an old farmer said, “from persevering after the grass and tumbling over.” Then at Speeton the chalk turns inland away from the coast, and the cliff makes a deep hollow curve, chiefly gravel and dark blue clay, abounding in fossils. To avoid the curve, I zigzagged down to the beach; but was presently stopped by a point against which the waves were dashing breast high. I scrambled over it, and was struck by its curious appearance. It seemed to be a high clay buttress, which had fallen perhaps within a few weeks, and was broken up into masses of somewhat regular form, resembling big loaves, and the long grass that had once waved on the surface now looked like dishevelled thatch. It was an interesting example of the way in which the sea commences its ravages.
Farther on the cliffs diminish in height, and are furrowed by numerous streamlets, and the rugged, stony beach changes to smooth, yielding sand. Filey comes in sight, and Filey Brig, a long black bar stretching into the sea from the extreme point of the great bay, half concealed at times by a quivering ridge of foam. Then we pass from the East to the North Riding, and ere long we look up at Filey—a
Royal Hotel
, a crescent, and rows of handsome houses, coldish of aspect, a terrace protected by a paved slope, and gravelled paths and a stair for easy access to the beach. The terrace commands a view over the bay, and of the cliffs all the way to Flamborough.
CHAPTER X
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
“When the Indian Ocean did the wanton play
Mingling its billows with the Balticke sea,
And the whole earth was water.”
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 tw