Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Scarborough is a seaside town and civil parish in the district and ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. With a population of 61,749, Scarborough is the largest town on the Yorkshire Coast and the fourth-largest settlement in the county.
It is located on the North Sea coastline, and is on the Cleveland Way long distance footpath which follows the coast through the town. Historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town lies between 10 and 230 feet above sea level, from Scarborough Harbour rising steeply north and west towards limestone cliffs. The older part of the town lies around the harbour and is protected by a rocky headland which extends into the North Sea.
The town has fishing and service industries, including a growing digital and creative economy, and is a tourist destination. Residents of the town are known as Scarborians.
Etymology
Scarborough was founded by Danes in the 10th century, when Thorgil built a stronghold here – hence 'Skarthi's burh'.History
Origins
The town is claimed to have been founded around 966 AD as Skarðaborg by Thorgils Skarthi, a Viking raider. There is no archaeological evidence to support this claim, which was made during the 1960s as part of a pageant of Scarborough events. The claim is based on a fragment of an Icelandic Saga. However, due to coastal erosion over the years, evidence may have been lost to the sea. In the 4th century, there was briefly a Roman signal station on Scarborough headland, and there is evidence of earlier settlements, during the Stone Age and Bronze Age. Any settlement between the fifth and ninth centuries would have been burned to the ground by a band of Vikings under Tostig Godwinson, Lord of Falsgrave, or Harald III of Norway. These periodic episodes of destruction and massacre means that very little evidence of settlement during this period remained to be recorded in the Domesday survey of 1085.Roman period
A Roman signal station was built on a cliff-top location overlooking the North Sea. It was one of a chain of signal stations, built to warn of sea-raiders. Coins found at the site show that it was occupied from until the early fifth century.In 2021 an excavation at a housing development in Eastfield, Scarborough, revealed a Roman luxury villa, religious sanctuary, or combination of both. The building layout is unique in Britain and extends over an area of about the size of two tennis courts. It included a bathhouse and a cylindrical tower with rooms radiating from it. The buildings were “designed by the highest-quality architects in northern Europe in the era and constructed by the finest craftsmen.” Historic England described the finds as “one of the most important Roman discoveries in the past decade” and recommended they be protected as a scheduled monument. The housing development layout was revised to incorporate a public green area over the remains which were reburied in 2022.
Medieval
Scarborough recovered under King Henry II, who built an Angevin stone castle on the headland and granted the town charters in 1155 and 1163, permitting a market on the sands and establishing rule by burgesses.Edward II granted Scarborough Castle to his favourite, Piers Gaveston. The castle was subsequently besieged by forces led by the barons Percy, Warenne, Clifford and Pembroke. Gaveston was captured and taken to Oxford and thence to Warwick Castle for execution.
In 1318, the town was burnt by the Scots, under Sir James Douglas following the Capture of Berwick upon Tweed.
In the Middle Ages, Scarborough Fair, permitted in a royal charter of 1253, held a six-week trading festival attracting merchants from all over Europe. It ran from Assumption Day, 15 August, until Michaelmas Day, 29 September. The fair continued to be held for 500 years, from the 13th to the 18th century, and is commemorated in the song Scarborough Fair:
Resort development
Scarborough and its castle changed hands seven times between Royalists and Parliamentarians during the English Civil War of the 1640s, enduring two lengthy and violent sieges. Following the civil war, much of the town lay in ruins.In 1626, Mrs Thomasin Farrer discovered a stream of acidic water running from one of the cliffs to the south of the town. This gave birth to Scarborough Spa, and Dr Robert Wittie's book about the spa waters published in 1660 attracted a flood of visitors to the town. Scarborough Spa became Britain's first seaside resort, though the first rolling bathing machines were not reported on the sands until 1735. It was a popular getaway destination for the wealthy of London, such as the bookseller Andrew Millar and his family. Their son Andrew junior died there in 1750.
The coming of the Scarborough–York railway in 1845 increased the tide of visitors. Scarborough railway station claims a record for the world's longest platform seat. From the 1880s until the First World War, Scarborough was one of the regular destinations for The Bass Excursions, when fifteen trains would take between 8,000 and 9,000 employees of Bass's Burton brewery on an annual trip to the seaside.
Maritime events
During the First World War, the town was bombarded by German warships of the High Seas Fleet, an act which shocked the British. Scarborough Pier Lighthouse, built in 1806, was damaged in the attack. A U-boat assault on the town, on 25 September 1916 saw three people killed and a further five injured. Eleven of Scarborough's trawler fleet were sunk at sea in another U-boat attack, on 4 September 1917.In 1929, the steam drifter Ascendent caught a tunny and a Scarborough showman awarded the crew 50 shillings so he could exhibit it as a tourist attraction. Big-game tunny fishing off Scarborough effectively started in 1930 when Lorenzo "Lawrie" Mitchell–Henry, landed a tunny caught on rod and line weighing.
A gentlemen's club, the British Tunny Club, was founded in 1933 and set up its headquarters in the town at the place which is now a restaurant with the same name. Scarborough became a resort for high society. A women's world tuna challenge cup was held for many years.
Colonel Edward Peel landed a world-record tunny of, capturing the record by from one caught off Nova Scotia by American champion Zane Grey. The British record which still stands is for a fish weighing caught off Scarborough in 1933 by Laurie Mitchell-Henry.
On 5 June 1993, Scarborough made international headlines when a landslip caused part of the Holbeck Hall Hotel, along with its gardens, to fall into the sea. Although the slip was shored up with rocks and the land has long since grassed over, evidence of the cliff's collapse remains clearly visible from The Esplanade, near Shuttleworth Gardens.
Scarborough has been affiliated with a number of Royal Navy vessels, including HMS Apollo, HMS Fearless and HMS Duncan.
Landmarks
The town has an Anglican church, St Martin-on-the-Hill, built in 1862–63 as the parish church of South Cliff. It contains works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown. A young Malton architect, John Gibson, designed the Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough's first purpose-built hotel.Notable Georgian structures include the Rotunda Museum, Cliff Bridge and Scarborough Pier Lighthouse. Victorian buildings include the Classical Public Library and Market Hall, the Town Hall, Scarborough Spa, the Art Gallery, the South Cliff Methodist Church, and Scarborough railway station. The architecture of Scarborough generally consists of small, low, orange pantile-roofed buildings in the historic old town, and larger Classical and late Victorian buildings reflecting the time during the 19th century as it expanded away from its historic centre into a coastal spa resort.
A notable landmark in the town is the Grand Hotel on St Nicholas Cliff. Designed by Cuthbert Brodrick of Hull, it was completed in 1867; at the time of its opening, it was the largest hotel and the largest brick structure in Europe. It uses local yellow brickwork with red detailing and is based around a theme of time: four towers represent the seasons, 12 floors the months, 52 chimneys the weeks and the original 365 bedrooms represented the days of the year. A blue plaque outside the hotel marks where the novelist Anne Brontë died in 1849. She was buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Church by the castle.
An amount of 20th century architecture exists within the main shopping district and in the form of surrounding suburbs. Buildings from this century include the Futurist Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Brunswick Shopping Centre, and GCHQ Scarborough, a satellite station on the outskirts of the town.
Geography
North Bay
The North Bay has traditionally been the more peaceful end of the resort and is home to Peasholm Park which, in June 2007, was restored to its Japanese-themed glory, complete with reconstructed pagoda, a new boat house was added in 2018. For many years a mock maritime battle has been regularly re-enacted on the boating lake with large model boats and fireworks throughout the summer holiday season.Northstead Manor Gardens include the North Bay Railway and three other attractions: a water chute, a boating lake with boats for hire during the summer season and the open-air theatre. The water chute is now grade II listed and is one of the oldest surviving water chutes in Britain, with the ride of today being the same as when it was opened in the 1930s. The North Bay Railway is a miniature railway running from near Peasholm Park, through Northstead Manor Gardens to the Sea Life Centre at Scalby Mills. The North Bay Railway has what is believed to be the oldest operational diesel-hydraulic locomotive in the world. Neptune was built in 1931 by Hudswell Clarke of Leeds and is appropriately numbered 1931.
Castle on the scar
The most striking feature of the town's geography is the high rocky promontory pointing eastward into the North Sea with Scarborough Castle on the top. The castle was bombarded by the German warships and in the First World War.The promontory divides the seafront into two bays, north and south. The two bays are linked by Marine Drive, an extensive Victorian promenade, built around the base of the headland. Both bays have popular sandy beaches and numerous rock-pools at low tide.