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Scarborough
Historical and geographical information
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Dates
are in red.
Hyperlinks
to other pages are in dark
blue.
Headlines
are in brown.
References
and citations are in turquoise.
Contextual
history is in purple.
This webpage about the Scarborough has the following section headings:
- Farndale
family history and Scarborough
- Scarborough, overview
- Timeline of Scarborough’s history
- Falsgrave
- Links, texts
and books
The Farndales of Scarborough
The Farndales who lived at or were
associated with Scarborough were Richard Findale (FAR00214),
joiner of Falsgrave; The Scarborough 1 Line; John Findale (FAR00276); Elizabeth
Findale (FAR00295); Thomas
Farndale (FAR00344);
Mary Farndale (FAR00349);
Elizabeth Farndale (FAR00415); Annie
Farndale (FAR00449);
Thomas Farndale (FAR00525);
Edith Annie Farndale (FAR00592);
Frank Farndale (FAR00622);
Albert Goodwill Farndale (FAR00623);
Robert Alan B Farndale (FAR00896);
The Scarborough 2 Line.
Scarborough
Scarborough is a town on the North Sea coast
of North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the North Riding
of Yorkshire, the town lies between 3 and 70 m above sea level,
rising steeply northward and westward from the harbour on to limestone cliffs.
The older part of the town lies around the harbour and is protected by a rocky
headland.
Scarborough has become the largest holiday
resort on the Yorkshire coast. People who live in the town
are known as Scarborians.
Scarborough Timeline
Fourth century CE
In the 4th century there had briefly
been a Roman signal station on Scarborough
headland and there is evidence of much earlier Stone Age and Bronze Age settlements.
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: Remains of the Bronze and
Early Iron Ages have been found here.
966 CE
The town was reportedly founded around
966 CE as Skarðaborg by Thorgils Skarthi, a Viking raider,
though there is no archaeological evidence to support these claims.
The origin of this belief is a fragment
of an Icelandic Saga. However any new settlement was
soon burned to the ground by a rival band of Vikings under Tosti (Tostig
Godwinson), Lord of Falsgrave, and Harald III of Norway. The destruction and
massacre meant that very little remained to be recorded in the Domesday survey
of 1085.
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: A 13th century
manuscript relates how in the 10th century a company of marauding Danes under
Knut and Harold, sons of Gorm, defeated Adalbricht
son of Adalmund at 'Skardaborg' and marched thence to
York.
The original inland village of Falsgrave was also Saxon rather
than Viking.
1066
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: In 1066 Harold Hardraada
in alliance with Earl Tosti, lord of Falsgrave,
seized and burnt the castle, 'took to burn then one house after another, and
then all the town gave itself up.'
1086
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: Scarborough was not mentioned in the
Survey of 1086.
1155
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. The
Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of
the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923:
Henry II, before 1163, granted
to the burgesses of Scarborough all liberties enjoyed by the citizens of York,
paying to the Crown as gabelage from each house 4d.
or 6d. according as the gable or side faced the street.
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.
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: The earliest settlement, or 'aldborough,' lay beneath the castle near the harbour; it
was walled by the time of King John. The wall ran from a moat on the north, by Auborough and Cross Street, to the sea; from this point the
southern wall went east, along Merchants' Row, now Eastborough,
to the castle dykes.
1253
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.
Scarborough
Fair is a traditional English ballad (existing
in more than one version) that hangs, in some versions at least, upon a
possible visit by an unidentified person to the Yorkshire town
of Scarborough. The song implies the tale of
a man who instructs a third party to tell his former love, who lives in
Scarborough, to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making
for him a shirt without a seam and no needlework and then washing it in a dry
empty well, adding that if she were to complete these tasks he would take her
back into his affections. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then
giving her sometime lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to
give him his seamless shirt and her heart once he has finished. As the versions
of the ballad known under the title "Scarborough Fair" are usually
limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning
the plot have been proposed, including the hypothesis that it is about
the Great Plague of
the late Middle Ages. The lyrics of "Scarborough
Fair" appear to have something in common with an obscure Scottish
ballad, The Elfin
Knight by Francis James Child, which has been traced
as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to
abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task
("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she
responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of
good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon
sea-strand").
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Are
you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary,
and thyme; Remember
me to one who lives there, For
she was once a true love of mine. Tell
her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; Without
any seam or needlework, Then
she shall be a true love of mine. |
Tell
her to wash it in yonder well, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; Where
never sprung water or rain ever fell, And
she shall be a true lover of mine. Tell
her to dry it on yonder thorn, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; Which
never bore blossom since Adam was born, Then
she shall be a true lover of mine. |
Now
he has asked me questions three, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; I
hope he'll answer as many for me, Before
he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell
him to buy me an acre of land, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; Between
the salt water and the sea sand, Then
he shall be a true lover of mine. |
Tell
him to plough it with a ram's horn, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; And
sow it all over with one peppercorn, And
he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell
him to sheer't with a sickle of leather, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme; And
bind it up with a peacock's feather, And
he shall be a true lover of mine. |
Tell
him to thrash it on yonder wall, Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme, And
never let one corn of it fall, Then
he shall be a true lover of mine. When
he has done and finished his work. Parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme: Oh,
tell him to come and he'll have his shirt, And
he shall be a true lover of mine. |
Thirteenth century seal of the Borough
of Scarborough
1318
In 1318, the town was burnt by the Scots, under Sir James Douglas following
the Capture of Berwick upon Tweed.
1626
In 1626, Elizabeth Farrow discovered a
stream of acidic water running from one of the cliffs to the south of the
town. This gave birth to Scarborough Spa.
1640
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.
1660
Dr Wittie's book about the spa waters
published in 1660 attracted a flood of visitors to the town.
1735
Scarborough Spa became Britain's first seaside resort, though the
first rolling bathing machines were not noted 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.
1845
A young Malton architect, John Gibson,
designed the Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough's first
purpose-built hotel. In 1841 a railway link between York and Scarborough was
being talked of and he decided that the area above the popular Spa building
could be developed. He designed and laid the foundations before passing the
construction of this hotel to the newly formed South Cliff Building Company. On
Tuesday, 10 June 1845 Scarborough's first hotel was opened: a marketing coup,
as the Grand Hotel, soon to be Europe's largest, was not yet finished.
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.
1857
1862
The town has a fine 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.
1867
When the Grand Hotel was completed in 1867 it
was one of the largest hotels in the world and one of the first giant
purpose-built hotels in Europe. Four towers represent the seasons, 12 floors
represent the months, 52 chimneys represent the weeks and originally 365 bedrooms
represented the days of the year. A blue plaque outside
marks where the novelist Anne Brontë died
in 1849. She was buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Church by the castle.
1880
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.
1916
During the First World
War, the town was bombarded by German warships of the High Seas
Fleet, an act which shocked the British (see Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and
Whitby).
1923
The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the
County of York North Riding: Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: At the present day
Scarborough occupies the neck of a lofty promontory which runs out to sea in a
north-easterly direction, the extremity forming the castle rock. The portion of
the town along the northern shore is of 19th-century growth, the old town
occupying the southern slope.
1929
In 1929 the steam
drifter Ascendent caught a 560-pound (250 kg) tunny (Atlantic bluefin tuna) and a Scarborough
showman awarded the crew 50 shillings so
he could exhibit it as a tourist attraction.
1930
Big-game tunny fishing off
Scarborough effectively started in 1930 when Lorenzo
"Lawrie" Mitchell–Henry, landed a tunny caught on rod and line
weighing 560 pounds (250 kg). 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 (and, later, Sir) Edward Peel landed a
world-record tunny of 798 pounds (362 kg), capturing the record by 40
pounds (18.1 kg) from one caught off Nova Scotia by
American champion Zane Grey. The British record which still
stands is for a fish weighing 851 pounds (386 kg) caught off Scarborough
in 1933 by Laurie Mitchell-Henry.
1993
On 5 June 1993 Scarborough made
headlines around the world 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.
Falsgrave
Falsgrave is a suburb of Scarborough.
Historically, the settlement of Falsgrave pre-dated
the Domesday Book survey and was also the manor in the area, existing as the
main administrative seat in the region long before the town of Scarborough
developed. Gradually the settlement of Falsgrave
became a suburb of Scarborough, and lies a little to
the west of the town.
1069
During the Harrying of the North between
1069 and 1071, most of the Manor of Falsgrave was
laid to waste, though to what extent is unknown especially in relation to the
coastal areas.
1086
Falsgrave is recorded in the Domesday Book as
being in the wapentake of Dic (later Pickering
Lythe), with twenty villagers and belonging to King William, though at the
Conquest, it was the property of Earl Morcar, who had
ousted Tosti in 1065.
Domesday recorded the name as Walesgrif, which means Pit or hollow by the hill.
The first part derives from Old Norse Hvalr (a
personal name), and the second part is from the same language gryfia meaning pit.
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding:
Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: In 1086 Falsgrave (Walesgrif, xi cent.;
Walsgrave, xii–xvi cent.; Waldegrave, xiv cent.; Walsgrave alias Falsgrave, xvii cent.) was land of the king, and with its berewick 'Nordfeld' was assessed at 15 carucates.
Tosti held a manor here before the
Conquest; the value was then £56, and in 1086 30s. To the manor belonged the
soke of Osgodby, Lebberston,
Gristhorpe, 'Scagetorp,' 'Eterstorp,' 'Rodebestorp,' Filey, Burton, Depedale, West
Ayton, Newton, Preston, Hutton, Marton, Wykeham, Ruston, 'Tornelai,'
Stainton, Burniston, Scalby and Cloughton, in all 84 carucates of land, 1½
carucates in Stemanesbi (Newby), and 2 carucates in Hackness, Suffield and Everley.
1106
Around 1106, the area became part of
what was known as the wapentake of Pickering Lythe.
1190
The soke of Falsgrave
was still mentioned in 1190.
1201
Scarborough developed separately from Falsgrave, however in 1201, King John granted 60 acres of
fields to the newer settlement from Falsgrave.
The Manor of Falsgrave
was historically an extensive and important administrative manor in the area,
with lands stretching as far north as Staintondale,
as far south as Filey, and as far west as Wykeham
(Steintun, Fieulac and Wicham
respectively in the Domesday survey). The Manor of Falsgrave
had 21 villages under its legal control (known as soke in Medieval times).
1256
In 1256, King Henry III enacted a
charter that stated "..to the burgesses of Escardeburgh [Scarborough], the enlargement of the
said borough, by adding the Manor of Whallesgrave [Falsgrave], with all the lands, pastures, mills, pools,
and all other things to the same manor belonging..”
1296
The manor was granted to the burgesses
of Scarborough in fee farm in 1256 and still belongs to them.
1351
In 1351 Edward III granted the warden
and scholars of King's Hall, Cambridge, in fee £22 11s. of the farm. The £42
11s. afterwards paid by Scarborough to Trinity College, Cambridge, was
confirmed to that foundation by Henry VIII.
1377
In 1377, King Richard II issued an edict
so that Walesgrif would be annexed to the town
of Scarborough, ceasing its status as a village, and eventually becoming a
suburb of Scarborough.
In 1624, a bond was agreed between the
town of Scarborough and one George Fletcher (a plumber) to maintain a steady
flow of water from Falsgrave through a lead pipe to
the town.
1648
During the English Civil War, the water pipe
was plundered by soldiers and needed frequent replacement. During 1648, Falsgrave was where the Parliamentarian side gathered to
besiege the Royalists in Scarborough Castle. They succeeded in December 1648.
1774
The nearby hills of Falsgrave
Moor (or Common) were enclosed in 1774.
1873
The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the
County of York North Riding: Volume 2 The borough of Scarborough, 1923: Falsgrave
was formed into an ecclesiastical parish in 1873.
1914
In December 1914, during the First World
War raid on Scarborough, several shells fire from German ships out at sea
rained down on Falsgrave including the park. There
were no reports of casualties, but many areas suffered significant damage.
Links, texts and books