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

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

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

Taken from the Staithes Museum Newsletter issue 12, April 2025 On April 12, 1901, a fierce North Sea storm threatened the lives of Runswick Bay's fishermen, all of whom were out at sea. With no able-bodied men ashore, the women of the village - wives, daughters, and sweethearts - took it upon themselves to launch the lifeboat to rescue their loved ones. Twenty women hauled the three-ton lifeboat across the beach and into the tumultuous waters. While the rowing was undertaken

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