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 two mouths, known from their position as North Well and South Well. The stream is constant, and, after all the wants of the establishment are supplied, runs across the sand to the sea. The water has a flavour of rusty iron and salt, differing in the two wells, although they are but a few feet apart; and the drinkers find it beneficial in cases of chronic debility and indigestion with their remorseless allies.
The contrast is more marked between New and Old than at Filey. There is, however, a good, respectable look about the streets of the Old Town, and signs of solid business, notwithstanding the collections of knick-knackery and inharmonious plate-glass. From the broad main street you descend by a narrow crooked street—from old through oldest to the harbour, where old anchors, old boats, old beams and buttresses dispute possession with the builders of new boats, who make the place noisy with their hammering. Here as a Yorkshireman would say, were assembled all the ‘ragabash’ of Scarborough, to judge by what they said and did. Boys and men were fishing from the pier-head under the lighthouse, watched by grizzly old mariners, who appeared to have nothing better to do than to sit in the sun; children paddled in the foamy shallows of the heavy breakers; carts rumbled slowly to and from the coal brigs, followed by stout fellows carrying baskets of fish; a sight which might have shamed the dissolute throng into something like industry.
Enclosed by the three piers which form the harbour stands a detached pile of masonry, seemingly an ancient breakwater—all weather-beaten, weedy, and grass-grown, with joints widely gaping, looking as if it had stood there ever since Leland’s day—a remarkable object amid the stir of trade and modern constructions, but quite in harmony with the old pantile-roofed houses that shut in the port. Among these you note touches of the picturesque; and your eye singles out the gables as reminiscences of the style which, more than any other, satisfies its desire.
But let us go and look down on the scene from the castle rock. The ascent is steep, yet rich in recompense. St. Mary’s church, near the summit, and the fragments of old walls standing amidst the graves, remind us of its former dimensions, and of the demolitions it suffered during the siege. And there rises in massive strength, to a height of ninety feet, a remnant of the castle keep—an imposing ruin full before us, as we cross the drawbridge, pass under the barbican, and along the covered way, to the inner court. But the court is a large, rough pasture, fenced on the north and east, where the cliff is bare and perpendicular, and towards the town shut in by a range of old wall, pierced by a few embrasures, some low buildings, and the remains of an ancient chapel. There is no picturesque assemblage of ruins; but little indeed besides the shattered keep, and that appears to best effect from without. Near the chapel, Our Lady’s Well, a spring famous from time immemorial, bubbles silently up in a darksome vault.
Northwards the view extends along the rugged coast to the Peak, a lofty point that looks down on Robin Hood’s Bay, and to hazy elevations beyond Whitby. To get a sight of the town you must return to the barbican, where you can step up on the wall and securely enjoy a bird’s-eye view: from the row of cannon which crown the precipice sheer down to the port and away to the Spa, all lies outspread before the curious eye.
A great height, as we have already proved, appears to be favourable to musing, especially when the sun shines bright. And here there is much to muse about. Harold Hardrada, when on his way to defeat and death at Stamford Brig, landed here, and climbing the “Scarburg” with his wild sea-rovers, lit a huge bonfire, and tossed the blazing logs over the cliff down upon the town beneath. The burg, or fortress, was replaced in the reign of Stephen by a castle, which, renewed by Henry II., became one of the most important strongholds of the kingdom. Piers Gavestone defended it vigorously against the Earl of Pembroke, but was starved into a surrender, with what result we all know. The Roman Catholics attempted it during their Pilgrimage of Grace, but were beaten off. In 1554, however, when Queen Mary was trying to accomplish the Pilgrims’ work, a son of Lord Stafford and thirty confederates, all disguised as rustics, sauntered unsuspected into the outer court, where on a sudden they surprised the sentries, and immediately admitting a reserve party carrying concealed arms, they made themselves masters of the place. The success of this surprise is said to have given rise to the adage “Scarborough warning; a word and a blow, and the blow first.” But after three days the Earl of Westmoreland regained possession, and Mr. Stafford underwent the same sharp discipline as befel Edward the Second’s favourite. At length came the struggle between Prerogative and People, and in the triumph of the right the castle was well-nigh demolished; and since then, time and tempest have done the rest.
Among the unfortunates who suffered imprisonment here, George Fox, the aboriginal Quaker, has left us a most pathetic account of his sufferings. Brought hither from Lancaster Castle, he was put into a chamber which he likened to purgatory for smoke, into which the rain beat, and after he had “laid out about fifty shillings” to make it habitable, “they removed me,” he writes in his Journal, “into a worse room, where I had neither chimney nor fireplace. This being to the sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two.” For more than a year did the resolute Peacemaker endure pain and privation, and vindicate his principles on this tall cliff; and when three years later, in 1669, he again went preaching in Yorkshire, he revisited Scarborough, and “the governor hearing I was come,” he writes, “sent to invite me to his house, saying, ‘surely I would not be so unkind as not to come and see him and his wife.’ So after the meeting I went up to visit him, and he received me very courteously and lovingly.”
Five hundred years earlier, and, as the ballad tells, the merry outlaw, Robin Hood, who