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

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,

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

A painting of Grief Among the paintings that capture the soul of Staithes, few convey its emotional depth as powerfully as Harold Knight’s Grief - on display in the museum in the form of a poster advertising a Staithes Group exhibition at Nottingham Castle. Though the painting itself is no longer in the village, its story is rooted here - in the same landscape, people, and tragedies that shaped both Harold and Laura Knight during their years in Staithes. The woman at the hear

Staithes Museum's replica of the Harrison Clock At Staithes Museum, we often think of Captain Cook’s voyages as the height of 18th-century maritime exploration — voyages that depended not only on courage and seamanship but also on advances in navigation. Among the most pressing questions of the age was how to find a ship’s longitude at sea — a problem so difficult it spawned a royal reward and centuries of effort. Most people have heard of John Harrison’s marine timekeepers.

Forget-me-not ring donated to Jane Harrison, donated to Jane Harrison by a Birmingham Jeweller, after the 1815 fishing disaster which claimed the lives of 29 fishermen, leaving 16 widows—seven of whom were pregnant—and 48 children fatherless. This Memorial Board display is shown each year during the Staithes Festival of Arts and Heritage. It was created by local historian Bill Hinchley to honour the memory of the Staithes fishermen who drowned at sea. The memorial board is th

Among the many treasures in Staithes Museum’s collection is a fascinating handwritten account of the village’s past, titled History of Staithes, by Annie Weatherill Cole (née Crispin). This document, found in a ring binder during our cataloguing process, provides a vivid, firsthand glimpse into the everyday lives, traditions, and industries of Staithes in the early 20th century. Annie’s history captures a time when fishing, shipbuilding, and mining were the backbone of the vi