Very Grand

One of the most prominent buildings on the seafront at Scarborough is the Grand Hotel. When it opened in July 1867 it was the largest brick building in Europe.

Rear view showing V plan

It is undoubtedly tall. It has 12 floors, including two attic levels, rooms in the eaves, and three basement levels. It is constructed on the side of the Valley cliff so the basement levels descend down the hillside.

The building was designed by Hull architect Cuthbert Brodrick (who also designed the Corn Exchange in Leeds) and took four years to complete. It is constructed in local Hunmanby bricks, hence its distinctive tawny colour.

The ground plan is V shaped, to commemorate Queen Victoria, and the building has 52 chimneys, representing the weeks in a year, its 12 floors represent the months, four towers represent the seasons, and originally had 365 rooms - one for every day.

Detail from the upper floors

It was a luxury hotel, costing more than £100,000 to build, and once attracted rich and upper class clientele. Among its customers was Winston Churchill, who stayed there during a political conference. During WWII it housed RAF service personnel who underwent drill training in the square below. These days it's very much a budget place to stay.

It's still stunning to look at. And it has a special place in my heart. If you read my other blog you might remember the photo of my Dad perched outside the Grand during his national service.

Tunny

Back in the 1930s there was a passion for sport fishing for the Atlantic bluefin tuna, or "tunny". The fish were caught from small boats with rod and line.

It was a sport favoured by the rich and famous, who founded the British Tunny Club near the harbour in Scarborough. (These days its a fish and chip shop.) Among the famous names who took part were newspaper baron Lord Astor, actor Charles Laughton (a Scarborough native), author Zane Grey, and flyboy Tommy Sopwith, of Sopwith Camel fame. 

The fish back then were huge - the British record was set at 851 pounds - and possibly the strongest in the world, so catching them offered the same kind of challenge as is seen these days in marlin  fishing.

Sadly, over-fishing led to a serious demise in the species's health and the sport faded out of favour in the 1950s.

Today there's a monument to the fad that stands near the old toll bar. Sculptor Ray Lonsdale's work The Tunny shows a fish on a line. An inscription reads: "Big fish little boat, just a rod, a line, a man. The days when the Tunny were here in the sea not just in a ringpull can."

Wreck

This weekend we were lucky enough to see something in Scarborough that's not always on show. Weather and tide conditions shift the sands on the south bay and once in a while the ribs of a wrecked boat appear for a few days.
No-one is really sure what the boat is. A report by the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre offers some possibilities.

One suggestion is that it could be the remains of the Coupland, which sank in 1861, also leading to the wreck of the town's lifeboat Amelia. But the Coupland is supposed to have foundered on rocks near the spa, and would have been smashed to pieces.

Another theory was that the boat was the Arun, which went down in storms in 1880, but according to historian George Westwood the wreck in the beach isn't big enough to be the Arun. Westwood believes the wreck is the Vivid, which sank while entering the harbour in 1888.

Whatever it is, this weekend was the first time I've ever seen the wreck, in spite of being associated with the town, and a regular visitor, for 50 plus years.  It made my weekend!

(Please excuse the raindrops on the lens!)

Scarborough Castle

The seaside town of Scarborough has two bays and they are separated by a prominent, rocky headland. On top of the cliff stand the remains of a castle.  Having grown up near the town that castle has been an iconic image for me for many years, although it is decades since I saw it close up. So on our latest trip to the town we put that right.

The earliest evidence of settlement of the headland dates from the Bronze Age. It probably consisted of a group of small houses, forming a farmstead where livestock could be grazed. It's difficult to say for sure how far the settlement extended because a large part of the cliff has fallen away through coastal erosion over the centuries.

Signal station site

Similarly there is not much of the Roman signal station remaining. A 1920s excavation revealed the base of a square tower standing inside a courtyard. Nearby a well provided the site with water. The beacon was one of a string along the north east coast that enabled Roman legions to stay in contact and warn of potential attacks from the sea.

They eventually came from the North in the form of Viking hordes who arrived in the 10th century. In fact Scarborough was founded in 966 by the Viking Skarde who gave it its original name - Skardeburg.

There was a very early Norman wooden castle on the headland, built by William Le Gros, grand-nephew of William the Conquerer but thta had disappeared by the time of Henry II who rebuilt a stone structure. Richard I ignored the place while he went off on his Crusades, but his brother King John invested a great deal of money in it so he could use Scarborough as a base while he sorted out the northern barons. Other kings, including Henry III and Edward I were also fond of the place and maintained it. Even Richard III spent time there (before losing his horse and his kingdom in Leicestershire)

During the Civil War it was held as a Royalist stronghold by Sir Hugh Cholmley (after he swapped sides), but fell, after a siege, to Parliamentarian troops. In fact the castle changed hands several times between 1642 and 1648, not always as a result of battle, and eventually became a prison run by Cromwell's forces, to house enemies of the Commonwealth.

It was a prison for quite some time and among its inmates was George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), who spent a year there on the orders of Charles II.

In December 1914 a German battle fleet sailed along the Yorkshire coast and staged an attack on Scarborough that killed 19 people. It also caused considerable damage to the town, including to the castle keep and the lighthouse.

In WWII it was rumoured to house a military listening post.  It's an open secret that there's still something similar on the outskirts of the town.

Who threw those stones?

They are called the Devil's Arrows and there are three of them. No-one is quite sure how many there were originally, or even what shape they were laid out in. Were they supposed to be part of a huge henge circle, or an alignment?

The third stone

They are in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, and easy to find on the edge of town. They are quite large, coming in at 18, 22 and 22 and a half feet tall. (5.5 and around 7 metres) That last one, according to the town's website, is taller than anything you'll find at Stonehenge.

There's a lovely tale associated with them. Apparently Old Nick (you know, the fallen angel) fell out with the neighbouring manor of Aldborough for some reason and decided to hurl huge stones at the residents as a punishment. He stood on How Hill, near Fountains Abbey, to get a better reach, but his throw wasn't up to it and the stones fell short.

Current archaeological thinking is that they were probably a single row. According to 16th century reports there were once at least four stones 'set in a straight and direct line'. (William Camden, 1560).  The fourth stone is believed to have been incorporated into a bridge in the grounds of Aldborough Manor.

For more information see the Boroughbridge website.