A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

While talking, she continued her preparations for dinner, and set one of her children to polish the “reckon-crooks.” The “reckon” is the crane in the kitchen fireplace, to which pots and kettles are suspended by the “crooks.” In old times, when a pot was lifted off, the maid was careful to stop the swinging of the crook, because, whenever the reckon-crooks swung the blessed Virgin used to weep.

Skinningrave—a few houses at the mouth of a narrow valley, a brook running briskly to the sea, a coast-guard station on the green shoulder of the southern cliff—makes up a pleasing scene as you descend to the beach. The village gossips can still talk on occasion about the golden age of smugglers, and a certain parish-clerk of the neighbourhood, who used to make the church steeple a hiding-place for his contraband goods. Smuggling hardly pays now on this coast. They can repeat, too, what they heard in their childhood concerning Paul Jones; how that, as at Whitby, the folk kept their money and valuables packed up, ready to start for the interior, watching day and night in great alarm, until at length the privateers did land, and fell to plundering from house to house. But when the fugitives returned they found nothing disturbed except the pantries and larders.

This was one of the places where the Bruce, proudest of the lords of Cleveland, had “free fisheries, plantage, floatage, lagan, jetsom, derelict, and other maritime franchises.” And an industrious explorer, who drew up a report on the district for Sir Thomas Chaloner, in that quaint old style which smacks of true British liberty, gives us a glimpse of Skinningrave morals in his day. The people, he says, with all their fish, were not rich; “for the moste parte, what they have they drinke; and howsoever they reckon with God, yt is a familiar maner to them to make even with the worlde at night, that pennilesse and carelesse they maye go lightly to their labour on the morrow morninge.” And, relating a strange story, he tells us that about the year 1535, certain fishers of the place captured a sea-man, and kept him “many weekes in an olde house, giving him rawe fish to eate, for all other fare he refused. Instead of voyce he skreaked, and showed himself courteous to such as flocked farre and neare to visit him; faire maydes were wellcomest guests to his harbour, whome he woulde beholde with a very earnest countenaynce, as if his phlegmaticke breaste had been touched with a sparke of love. One day when the good demeanour of this newe gueste had made his hosts secure of his abode with them, he privily stole out of doores, and ere he could be overtaken recovered the sea, whereinto he plunged himself; yet as one that woulde not unmannerly depart without taking of his leave, from the mydle upwardes he raysed his shoulders often above the waves, and makinge signes of acknowledgeing his good entertainment to such as beheld him on the shore, as they interpreted yt. After a pretty while he dived downe, and appeared no more.”

Give me leave, reader, to quote one more passage, in which our narrator notices the phenomenon now known as the calling of the sea. “The little stream here,” he says, “serveth as a trunke or conduite to convey the rumor of the sea into the neighbouring fieldes; for when all wyndes are whiste, and the sea restes unmoved as a standing poole, sometimes there is such a horrible groaninge heard from that creake at the least six myles in the mayne lande, that the fishermen dare not put forth, thoughe thyrste of gaine drive them on, houlding an opinion that the sea, as a greedy beaste raginge for hunger, desyers to be satisfyed with men’s carcases.”

I crossed the beach where noisy rustics were loading carts from the thick beds of tangle, to the opposite cliff, and found a path to the top in a romantic hollow behind the point. Again the height increases, and presently you get a peep at Handale, traceable by its woods; and Freeburgh Hill, which was long taken for a tumulus, appears beyond. After much learned assertion in favour of its artificial formation, the question was settled by opening a sandstone quarry on its side. Still higher, and we are on Huntcliff Nab, a precipice of three hundred and sixty feet, backed by broad fields and pastures. Farther, we come to broken ground, and then to a sudden descent by a zigzag path at the Saltburn coast-guard station; and here the noble range of cliffs sinks down to one of the pleasantest valleys of Cleveland—an outlet for little rivers. Pausing here on the brow we see the end of our coast travel, Redcar, and the mouth of the Tees five miles distant, and all between the finest sandy beach washed by the North Sea: level and smooth as a floor. The cliff behind is a mere bank, as along the shore of Holderness, and there is a greater breadth of plain country under our eye than we have seen for some days past.

Among the hills, picturesquely upheaved in the rear of the plain, I recognized the pointed summit of Rosebury Topping; and with almost as much pleasure as if it had been the face of a friend, so many recollections did the sight of the cone awaken of youthful days, and of circumstances that seemed to have left no impression. And therewith came back for a while the gladsome bounding emotions that consort with youth’s inexperience.

Some time elapsed before I could make up my mind to quit the turfy seat on the edge of the cliff, and betake myself to the nether ground. The path zigzags steeply, and would be dangerous in places were it not protected by a handrope and posts. At the public-house below the requisites of a simple dinner can be had, and excellent beer. While I ate, two men were busy casting bullets, and turning them out to cool in the middle of the floor. They were going to shoot cormorants along Huntcliff Nab, where the birds lodge in the clefts and afford good practice for a rifle.

Concerning the Nab, our ancient friend describes it as “full of craggs and steepe rocks, wherein meawes, pidgeons, and sea-fowle breade plentifully; and here the sea castinge up peble-stones maketh the coaste troublesome to passe.” And seals resorted to the rocks about its base, cunning animals, which set a sentry to watch for the approach of men, and dived immediately that the alarm was given. But “the poore women that gather cockles and mussels on the sandes, by often use are in better credyte with them. Therefore, whosoe intends to kill any of them must craftely put on the habyte of a woman, to gayne grounde within the reache of his peece.”

The sands at the mouth of the valley are furrowed and channeled by the streams that here find their outlet; and you will get many a splash in striding across. The view of the valley backed by hills and woods is a temptation, for yonder lie fair prospects, and the obscure ruins of Kilton Castle; but the sea is on the other side, and the sands stretch away invitingly before us. Their breadth, seen near low water, as when I saw them, may be guessed at more than half a mile, and from Saltburn to Redcar, and for four or five miles up the estuary of the Tees they continue, a gentle slope dry and firm, noisy to a horse’s foot, yet something elastic under the tread of a pedestrian. At one time the Redcar races were always held on the broad sands, and every day the visitors to the little town resort to the smooth expanse for their exercise, whether on foot or on wheels. For my part, I ceased to regret leaving the crest of the cliffs, and found a novel sense of enjoyment in walking along the wide-spread shore, where the surface is smooth and unbroken except here and there a solitary pebble, or a shallow pool, or a patch left rough by the ripples. And all the while a thin film, paler than the rest, as if the surface were in motion, is drifting rapidly with the wind, and producing before your eyes, on the margin of the low cliff, some of the phenomena of blown sands.

Smugglers liked this bit of the coast, because of the easy access to the interior; and many a hard fight has here been had between them and the officers of the law in former times, and not without loss of life. The lowlands, too, were liable to inundation. Marske, of which the church has been our landmark nearly all the way from Saltburn, was once a marsh. If we mount the bank here we shall see the marine hotel, and the village, and the mansion of Mr. Pease, who is the railway king of these parts. And there is Marske Hall, dating from the time of Charles the First, which, associated with the names of Fauconberg and Dundas, has become historical. In the churchyard you may see the graves of shipwrecked seamen, and others indicated by a series of family names that will detain you awhile. Here in April, 1779—that fatal year—was buried James Cook, the day-labourer, and father of the illustrious navigator. And truly there seems something appropriate in laying him to rest within hearing of that element on which his son achieved lasting renown for himself and his country. Providence was kind to the old man, and took him away six weeks after that terrible massacre at Owhyhee, thereby saving his last days from hopeless sorrow.