The headland itself is lower by more than a 100 feet than the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Bempton and Speeton, which for a distance of over two miles exceed 300 feet. A road from Bempton village stops short a few fields from the margin of the cliffs, and a path keeps close to the precipitous wall of gleaming white chalk.
We come over the dry, sweet-smelling grass to the cliff edge on a fresh morning, with a deep blue sky overhead and a sea below of ultramarine broken up with an infinitude of surfaces reflecting scraps of the cliffs and the few white clouds. Falling on our knees, we look straight downwards into a cove full of blue shade; but so bright is the surrounding light that every detail is microscopically clear. The crumpling and distortion of the successive layers of chalk can be seen with such ease that we might be looking at a geological textbook. On the ledges, too, can be seen rows of little white-breasted puffins; razor-bills are perched here and there, as well as countless guillemots. The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs, and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge. If it is taken away by those who plunder the cliffs at the risk of their lives, the bird lays another egg, and if that disappears, perhaps even a third. The innumerable varieties in the eggs make the gathering of them for collectors very profitable. Unwelcome as this annual robbing of the eggs may be, yet to watch a man being lowered over the cliff by what appears to be a mere thread, and to see him suspended over the restless waves, is a thrilling sight.
The great promontory of Flamborough, though in many ways claiming a high position in the list of England’s places of natural beauty, suffers much from being popular. In the season, I am told—for I have always visited Flamborough in spring or autumn—the road from the station to the lighthouse is often crowded, and I have not the smallest doubt that this is true from the appearance of the roads, the village, and even the North Landing, for on the occasion of my first visit, in the early spring, I was painfully impressed with the feeling that everything bore the tired, unsatisfactory appearance of a place infested with excursionists. The edges of the paths had a look of being overworn and overtrodden; fences, gates, and the like were too much carved with foolish initials, and everywhere I glanced I found the distressing scraps of old newspaper, the grocer’s paper-bag long rifled of its contents, and the coloured cardboard box that once enclosed tablets of chocolate. It is quite as much a desecration to litter with scraps of dirty paper a noble cape, whose whole aspect is otherwise just as the hand of Time has left it, as to drop sandwich-papers on the floor of some venerable minster, and hope that the result will not be painful to the next who enters the building.
The desecrated area of Flamborough Head lies between the village and the North Landing, and if we are deliberately unobservant between those points, we may be able to give the headland the appreciation it deserves, provided always that we do not go there in the popular time. Coming from the station, the first noticeable feature is at the point where the road, until a few months ago, made a sharp turn into a deep wooded hollow. It is here that we cross the line of the remarkable entrenchment known as the Danes’ Dyke. At this point it appears to follow the bed of a stream, but northwards, right across the promontory—that is, for two-thirds of its length—the huge trench is purely artificial. No doubt the vallum on the seaward side has been worn down very considerably, and the fosse would have been deeper, making in its youth, a barrier which must have given the dwellers on the headland a very complete security.
Like most popular names, the association of the Danes with the digging of this enormous trench has been proved to be inaccurate, and it would have been less misleading and far more popular if the work had been attributed to the devil. In the autumn of 1879 General Pitt Rivers dug several trenches in the rampart just north of the point where the road from Bempton passes through the Dyke. The position was chosen in order that the excavations might be close to the small stream which runs inside the Dyke at this point, the likelihood of utensils or weapons being dropped close to the water-supply of the defenders being considered important. The results of the excavations proved conclusively that the people who dug the ditch and threw up the rampart were users of flint. The one piece of pottery discovered was pierced with a hole, and seemed to be the ear of a jar, and the worked flint implements included a perfectly formed leaf-shaped arrow-head, a flint formed into a small hatchet, and others chiefly coming under the head of scrapers. The most remarkable discovery was that the ground on the inner slope of the rampart, at a short distance below the surface, contained innumerable artificial flint flakes, all tying in a horizontal position, but none were found on the outer slope. From this fact General Pitt Rivers concluded that within the stockade running along the top of the vallum the defenders were in the habit of chipping their weapons, the flakes falling on the inside. The great entrenchment of Flamborough is consequently the work of flint-using people, and ‘is not later than the Bronze Period.’ And the strangest fact concerning the promontory is the isolation of its inhabitants from the rest of the county, a traditional hatred for strangers having kept the fisher-folk of the peninsula aloof from outside influences. They have married among themselves for so long, that it is quite possible that their ancestral characteristics have been reproduced, with only a very slight intermixture of other stocks, for an exceptionally long period. On taking minute particulars of ninety Flamborough men and women, General Pitt Rivers discovered that they were above the average stature of the neighbourhood, and were, with only one or two exceptions, dark haired. They showed little or no trace of the fair-haired element usually found in the people of this part of Yorkshire. It is also stated that almost within living memory, when the headland was still further isolated by a belt of uncultivated wolds, the village could not be approached by a stranger without some danger. Those are years to look back upon with regret, because they are past, for in the place of a jealous isolation has come the vulgarizing of the mob. How much more interesting would have been an exploration of the headland, if it were necessary to approach the great Dyke with caution, looking anxiously round for one of the natives with whom to parley for permission to go on, and then how sweet would have been the enjoyment of the special privilege obtained to wander in a patch of a really primitive England!
We find no one to object to our intrusion, and go on towards the village. It is a straggling collection of low, red houses, lacking, unfortunately, anything which can honestly be termed picturesque; for the church stands alone, a little to the south, and the small ruin of what is called ‘The Danish Tower’ is too insignificant to add to the attractiveness of the place. In painfully conspicuous isolation stands a tall and unsightly chapel, built of red brick in a style suitable for the temple of an eccentric brotherhood. The inns are quaint in appearance, but they have evidently never cultivated the patronage of anyone outside the village; and a few rows of new cottages are so woefully similar to those packed together in the slums of a great city, that it is hard to realize the depths of depravity that could have tolerated their construction.
All the males of Flamborough are fishermen, or dependent on fishing for their livelihood; and in spite of the summer visitors, there is a total indifference to their incursions in the way of catering for their entertainment, the aim of the trippers being the lighthouse and the cliffs nearly two miles away.
Formerly, the church had only a belfry of timber, the existing stone tower being only ten years old. Under the Norman chancel arch there is a delicately-carved Perpendicular screen, having thirteen canopied niches richly carved above and below, and still showing in places the red, blue, and gold of its old paint-work. Another screen south of the chancel is patched and roughly finished. The altar-tomb of Sir Marmaduke Constable, of Flamborough, on the north side of the chancel, is remarkable for its long inscription, detailing the chief events in the life of this great man, who was considered one of the most eminent and potent persons in the county in the reign of Henry VIII. The greatness of the man is borne out first in a recital of his doughty deeds: of his passing over to France ‘with Kyng Edwarde the fouriht, yᵗ noble knyght.’
‘And also with noble king Herre, the sevinth of that name
He was also at Barwick at the winnyng of the same [1482]
And by ky[n]g Edward chosy[n] Captey[n] there first of anyone
And rewllid and governid ther his tyme without blame
But for all that, as ye se, he lieth under this stone.’
The inscription goes on in this way to tell how he fought at Flodden Field when he was seventy, ‘nothyng hedyng his age.’ Then follow reflections on the passing of the valorous old knight: