From a brick of wartime cake to a honeymoon derailed by bombing, two remarkable archive documents preserve the humour, heartache and everyday ingenuity of people who lived through the First and Second World Wars around Staithes and East Cleveland. “I remember hitting it on a wooden topped dresser with my fists and you couldn't tell the difference in sound.” The offending object was a cake. Or, at least, it was supposed to be one. Flour was rationed, the ingredients were preci

An artist’s memories of a Yorkshire fishing village, its extraordinary characters, its tragedies, and the people who helped her find her way as a painter. Today, Staithes is admired for its colourful cottages, steep winding streets and beautiful coastline. But when the young artist Laura Johnson arrived in the village in the late nineteenth century, it was a very different place from the one we know today. Fishing was a dangerous and uncertain livelihood, storms could bring d

The ironstone mines, the great cliffs, a mysterious fossil, a very peculiar toilet and a heartbreaking family tragedy: in his autobiography Out of the Old Earth, writer Harold Heslop recalls the extraordinary years he spent as a boy at Boulby, looking out over the sea beyond Staithes. Staithes has always been a place best understood through the people who have lived here, worked here and watched the sea from its shores. Their stories are not confined to the narrow streets of

One of our local volunteers has written an article to give you an introduction to Alum. Come and see some real alum at the museum - and a unique urine barrel... Alum was used as a mordant or fixative for dyes in the textile industry, for waterproofing leather, in the manufacture of parchment, glass and candles, and as a fire-retardant. As a fixative for natural dyes it was essential to allow the finery of the Church, the crown or the court to be distinctive from the drab colo

Meet the remarkable mechanism at Staithes Museum that celebrates John Harrison’s quest to solve one of the great challenges of seafaring: how do you know exactly where you are when all you can see is sea? There is something wonderfully satisfying about the Devon Sea Clock at Staithes Museum. With its brass gears, swinging arms, intricate framework and three separate dials, it looks as though somebody has taken a clock apart and then decided to leave all the interesting bits o

What did it feel like to grow up in Staithes in the early twentieth century? What did children wear, what did they get up to, and what happened when you wanted to go to Sunday School but your clothes weren't quite up to scratch? We can find out from an unlikely source: a life story written by the Reverend W. T. Mugford, who left Yorkshire for America and eventually became a Baptist minister. His booklet, From an English Pit to an American Pulpit, recounts a life of faith, fam

From homemade remedies and cliffside rescues to the great storm of 1953, Edward Hugill’s memories offer a remarkable glimpse into life in Staithes during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. What was it like growing up in Staithes when fishing and ironstone mining shaped everyday life, neighbours looked after one another, and a man with a first-aid kit could find himself treating anything from a broken arm to an injured cow? Edward Hugill was born at Wavecrest, on Seaton Garth, on 27

A coconut shell. A pincushion. A shipwreck survivor. A Royal Navy expedition. A Captain Cook monument. And a journey of thousands of miles. Some museum objects announce their importance immediately. They are large, beautiful, rare or obviously historic. Others are rather more deceptive. Our Object of the Month is one of the latter. At first glance, it looks like a rather attractive piece of old coconut shell, polished to a warm brown, with the inside adapted to make a pincush

Hello everyone, September has been a busy one at Staithes Museum, with a record-breaking Arts Festival, a special premiere of our new museum film, and plenty of fascinating discoveries in the archives! Our latest newsletter is below, with all the news from behind the scenes, stories from the Eileen Huby collection, our poetry competition winners, six new blog posts, and a few mysteries we could do with your help solving. Thank you, as always, for your continued interest and s

What is the story behind Staithes Museum? It is a surprisingly complicated question. The museum is housed in the old Primitive Methodist chapel on Church Street, but the story of the museum is much more than the story of a building. It is the story of Anne and Reg Firth, who created the museum; of the people who helped to save it after Reg's death; of generations of Staithes families; and of the objects, photographs, memories and traditions that have found their way into the

What was Staithes like when the village was still a close-knit fishing community, when chapels were packed on Sundays, families knitted and sang together, and the carnival could seem almost magical to a child who had never seen anything like it before? This is the sort of question behind a new oral history project at Staithes Museum, which aims to record the memories of local people: the everyday stories, memorable characters, customs, family traditions and little details tha

A family story, a shooting in the woods, a murder trial, a mysterious death – and four years of research in the archives of North Yorkshire One of the pleasures of working with an archive is discovering that the most interesting family history stories are the ones that start and end with questions that are left unanswered... Sometimes you get a photograph, a name, a date and a family story. Then you start pulling at the threads – and discover that the story is simultaneously

Staithes has plenty of picturesque cottages, narrow lanes and lovely views — but look a little closer and almost every corner of the village has a story attached to it. Bill Hinchley was born in Staithes and has spent his life collecting those stories. In this heritage walking tour, created by the North York Moors National Park, Bill takes us around the village, sharing memories, local history, old photographs in our minds, and quite a few entertaining tales along the way. Th

For generations of people in Staithes, Marie Lowden was simply “the Toffee Lady”: the woman on the High Street who made and sold her own crackly toffee. But behind that familiar village memory was a woman who had already lived several lives before she began selling sweets — and who, in later life, became a remarkably prolific published writer. There are some people who become part of a place so completely that their names almost become attached to the landscape. In Staithes,

" Youth with swift feet walks onward in the way, The land of joy lies all before his eyes." In 1927, a party of schoolchildren from Royds Hall School in Huddersfield came to Staithes for their summer camp. We don't know very much about the school from our own collection, but we do have something rather better: their school magazine, The Roydsian, in which the campers recorded their adventures. There is poetry about the cliffs and sea, an enthusiastic recommendation of Staithe

Hello everyone, The September newsletter is here! This month we’ve got lots of Arts Festival excitement, including Colin’s Captain Cook talk, our poetry competition, Bill Hinchley’s memorial board, and a rather lovely little doll who has managed to connect together half a dozen bits of Staithes history. There’s also an update on my apprenticeship exhibition ideas, a bit more about Eileen Huby’s incredible family history research, and details of our volunteer open day on 1 Oct

If you’re new to Staithes, it can sometimes feel as though every cobbled street, old building, brick and bend in the Beck has a story to tell. And, frankly, it does! Staithes has a remarkably rich history for such a small village. For centuries, its people made their living from the sea, the cliffs and the land around them. Fishermen ventured out into the North Sea, miners worked the cliffs for alum, jet and ironstone, artists arrived with their easels, and generations of loc

Hello, everyone! It’s a little late, but here at last is our July newsletter! It’s been a busy few weeks at the museum, with our Accreditation visit, filming for our new accessibility film, Issy’s work experience exhibition, lots of archive discoveries, and plenty more besides. We’ve also got Lifeboat Weekend coming up this month, followed by the Staithes Festival of Arts & Heritage in September. You can read all about what we’ve been up to in the newsletter (click the button

Look closely at a piece of jet and it doesn’t look particularly impressive at first. Fresh from the cliff, it is not the deep, glossy black that we associate with Victorian jewellery. It is often brownish-grey, dull, and easy to mistake for an ordinary lump of coal. But polish it, and something remarkable happens. The surface transforms into a deep, velvet black that catches the light like glass. For centuries, this strange little piece of fossilised woodland has been pulled

Hello everyone, The latest museum newsletter has just landed! The full version is linked here, or in a text-only version below. This month's edition is packed with all sorts of exciting things happening behind the scenes and around the museum. Inside you'll find: Our brand new Poetry Competition (plus a colourful Poetry Adventure Booklet to get everyone writing) The triumphant entrance of our newly restored Captain Cook portrait Why Bill Hinchley now has his own appreciation