Rock armour, childhood adventures, a dramatic rescue at the harbour, pigeon racing, local businesses and a village carnival remembered. What was happening in Staithes in May 1994? We turn the pages of the very first issue of The Steeaze Bellman to find out. In May 1994, a new publication arrived in Staithes. It was called The Steeaze Bellman, and its ambition was to give the village something it wanted: a way to talk to itself. Its first issue was a modest production, but it

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

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

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

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 January 2026 I never met Reg Firth, yet reading Tony Horowitz’s chapter in Blue Latitudes—found for me by Bill Hinchley—was like meeting him through the pages. What comes across most vividly is his deep, personal connection to Captain Cook and to the museum he created in Staithes. Reg was a man of meticulous care and boundless energy. He reconstructed Sanderson’s shop—the place where Cook once worked—as a two-story display, complete with a

From Staithes Museum Newsletter issue 6, for October 2024 One of our most intriguing artefacts has been sparking curiosity among visitors: a charming poster from the Staithes Feast of 1797. Its language, rich with old customs and local games, can be hard to decode. But thanks to a serendipitous find among photocopies of records of Hinderwell baptisms, we now understand how a Skep and Pole trial was performed over 200 years ago. “Some explanation is needed to make this task un