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

Walk around a museum and you'll find thousands of objects. A fishing hook. A pair of clogs. A sailor's compass. A child's toy. A faded photograph. Each one has a story, but museums don't always know every part of it. Who held it last?What was happening on the day it was used?What hopes did it carry? What arguments did it overhear? What adventures did it survive? Sometimes history leaves us facts. Sometimes it leaves us questions. Poetry has a wonderful way of filling the spac

In this blog post, I'll tell you a bit about my favourite romance in the history of Staithes. The Secret Staithes Diary of Enid Lucy Pease Robinson, edited by James Hart and published in 2010, is a unique first-hand account of life in Staithes during the summer of 1901. Written by a 20-year-old woman from the prominent Pease family of Darlington, the diary was discovered at an auction in West Sussex nearly a century after it was written. The "Secret" Nature of the Diary The j

Hello, all! Please find linked here the latest Staithes Museum newsletter. A text-only version is below this message. This month's edition includes updates on our rolling ball clock, a new family activity sheet inspired by Staithes smugglers, reflections from a museum symposium in Plymouth, an update on our social media experiments, and news of a rather unusual upcoming visit from some ghost hunters. There's also a look at what we're tentatively calling "The Bill Hinchley Eff

From the Staithes Museum Newsletter, June 2026. Speaking of poetry this month… Cowbar Nab looks fixed and familiar now, but in the poetry and stories of Staithes it is rarely just a lump of sandstone. It becomes a pulpit, a racecourse grandstand, a weather gauge, and occasionally even a punchline. If you listen carefully, it seems less like a landscape and more like a place that keeps getting re-described by whoever is standing in front of it. ⛪ John Castillo — Cowbar as sacr

From the Staithes Museum Newsletter, June 2026 For over two centuries, the face of Captain James Cook has been an fixture of global history, appearing on everything from coins and stamps to commemorative plaques and statues. In the museum he appears everywhere - from statuettes to sardine tins. However, for those who seek to find the "real" man behind the navigator, the history of his portraits offers a series of competing and often contradictory identities. As the noted Coo

For over a century after 1720, the village of Staithes was a major hub for the "Free Trade" - better known as smuggling. While official industries like fishing and ironstone production were important, smuggling formed a vital "hidden economy" that supplemented the income of almost every resident. The unique architecture of the town, with its labyrinthine network of passages, attic hatches, and hidden cellars, made it the perfect haunt for evading the law. Smuggling was a true

David Clark’s book, Between Pulpit and Pew, is a study of how religion actually worked in Staithes during the mid-1970s. Instead of just looking at what ministers preached, Clark looked at the "folk religion"—the local traditions, superstitions, and habits that really mattered to the villagers Here are the main ideas he discusses: 1. Official Religion vs. Folk Religion Official Religion: This is the formal stuff—the rules of the Methodist or Anglican church and what the minis