Our good friends at the Filey Bay Initiative have produced many leaflets on a huge range of subjects. Their latest focuses on Filey’s shops. As the leaflet notes, the shopping streets have moved from the former fishing quarter at Queen Street, to their present location as the town expanded during the Victorian era. We are […]

Sad news that the lovely Filey Museum will not be reopening this year due to the ongoing issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The museum was set to open this spring, but lockdown meant that the grade II listed building had to remain closed. It was hoped to be able to open during the summer […]

At first glance, The Carrs is an unremarkable landscape. The flat fields have more of a resemblance to the Fens of Eastern England than to Yorkshire. But there are secrets hidden beneath the peaty soil of The Carrs. It is home to probably the most important Prehistoric site that you have never heard of. Star Carr. The Carrs […]

As we flick page through the pages of history, it is tempting to ascribe certain years as the end of one chapter and, therefore, the beginning of another. There is no more alluring target than the year 1914. Philip Larkin lamented that there would ‘never such innocence again’ in his poem MCMXIV. It has a […]

Among the rocks beneath Speeton cliffs lies a rusting ship’s boiler. It marks the last resting place of the Hull trawler the Diamond. She was ran aground in thick fog in the wee hours of 9 January 1912. The Diamond, a modern steam trawler, had been fishing on the East Fladen grounds, roughly 100 miles north […]

Beneath Bempton’s towering cliffs lie the barnacle encrusted remains of a ship. A huge boiler appears from the waves as the tide recedes. However, the most haunting part is the eyelet where the ship’s propeller once turned. It’s watery finger points skyward. A warning of the perils of the sea? A grave marker of a […]

The Tour de Yorkshire should have been poised to pass through Filey, despite the postponement, due to the Corona virus, it is still a great time to remember one of Filey’s sporting heroes. Filey-born born Herbert Liddell Cortis was the first cyclist to ride twenty miles in an hour, breaking the record at the Crystal Palace, London […]

Walk along The Crescent and glance at the tops of the gardens walls and it won’t be long before you notice metal studs, a remanent of the original garden railings. In such a carefully preserved area you may wonder why were the iron railings removed? The answer lies in wartime Britain. During the summer of […]

Earthquakes in Britain tend to be underwhelming events. A tremor in Lincolnshire in 2008 was described as ‘you know that noise radiators sometimes make’. In 2014 a quake centred on Leicestershire was reported as sounding like ‘the cat had fallen off the wardrobe’. Given that since the mid-1500s only eleven people have died as a […]

A debate on who has been Filey’s most famous visitor is one that could run on and on. In one decade (1860s) The Royal Crescent Hotel hosted visitors of the calibre of the Archbishop of York, the two time Liberal Prime Minister Lord John Russell and His Grace the Duke of St Albans. Even away […]