Film: The Stories of Staithes Museum
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 collection.
Now there is a new way to hear some of those stories.
Watch the film
The film brings together memories from local people, museum volunteers and people closely connected with the museum, exploring some of the stories behind the objects and photographs on display.
It is a film about the museum, but it is also a film about Staithes itself – its fishing families, its working women, its miners, artists, characters, traditions and changing way of life.
And there are quite a few surprises along the way.
Why we made the film
One of the challenges of running a museum in an historic building is that the building itself can sometimes make the collection difficult to access.
Staithes Museum is housed in an 1880 Primitive Methodist chapel, and many of our galleries and some of our most interesting objects are upstairs. For visitors who cannot manage the steps, that has always meant that there are parts of the museum they simply cannot experience.
We wanted to do something about that.
This film is part of a project designed to bring some of those upstairs stories to visitors who cannot get there in person. It is available to watch on the screen in the museum, so that visitors can sit down and spend some time hearing the stories even if the stairs are not an option.
But we hope it will be useful to everyone.
Because there is something rather lovely about sitting down and hearing somebody who knows Staithes tell you the story of an object. It gives you a different way into the collection.
And, of course, the film is also available here online, so that you can watch it wherever you are.
“With the museum, you do go in and you find something…”
One of the best descriptions of what a museum does comes from the film itself:
“With the museum, you do go in and you find something and you think, hmm, what's the story with that?”
That is very much how Staithes Museum works.
An object might look ordinary at first. A photograph might contain a group of people whose names have been forgotten. A piece of clothing might simply look like an old piece of clothing.
Then somebody comes through the door and says:
“That's my grandad.”
Or:
“My mother used to have one of those.”
Or:
“I remember hearing that story.”
And suddenly the object has a history.
This is one of the things that makes a local museum particularly special. The information is not all contained on the label. Sometimes the person standing in front of the case is the person who can tell you what you are looking at.
The story of the museum itself
The film begins with memories of when the museum was first being created.
One local resident remembers hearing that Anne and Reg were going to open a museum in the old chapel – and remembers seeing them on the roof, putting slates back on.
Another remembers initially assuming that the building was going to become holiday cottages or flats.
Instead, it became a museum.
Reg Firth became particularly well known for his fascination with Captain Cook. His collecting was enthusiastic and wide-ranging, and Captain Cook became an important part of the museum's collection and identity.
The film includes the story of Reg sailing on the replica Endeavour and persuading the ship to come into Staithes for one night. There was even a Captain Cook impersonator, while Reg dressed up to host people in the museum.
It is a wonderful example of the enthusiasm that has always been part of the museum's story.
But the museum's story did not end with Reg.
After his death, Anne could no longer run everything on her own. A group of local people came together to raise more than £100,000 to keep the collection together and keep it in Staithes.
That effort is an important part of the museum's history too.
The stories behind the objects
The film moves between the history of the museum and the stories contained within its collection.
One of the objects featured is a tiny girl's dress, perhaps 200 years old.
It was discovered by Jackie Roe when work was being carried out on her roof. It had been stuffed into the roof space along with a pair of ice skates.
Why would somebody put an old dress into a roof?
The answer takes us into the world of traditional beliefs about clothing and the home. There was a belief that clothing which had been worn until it was no longer useful could be hidden in parts of a house to help protect it, carrying with it something of the person who had worn it.
So the little dress becomes more than an old garment.
It becomes evidence of a belief about family, home and protection.
That is the kind of story we hope the film encourages people to look for when they visit the museum.
Fishing, families and the Thomas and Margaret
For much of its history, Staithes was a fishing community, and the museum holds many objects and stories connected with that life.
John Cole talks in the film about his own family history, which goes back to the early 1600s in the village, and about the generations of his family involved in fishing.
He also tells the story of the Thomas and Margaret, a yawl which was lost in a storm in 1865.
The vessel was making for Hartlepool when it was demasted. Eleven people were lost: nine men and two boys, aged just 13 and 12.
For local families, these were not distant historical events. The people who died were someone's fathers, sons, brothers and husbands.
The museum's memorial cards – locally known as death cards – record the names and details of those who were lost.
The collection allows us to connect those names to the families and community they belonged to.
The women of Staithes
The film also deliberately looks beyond the traditional image of the fisherman.
Women were an essential part of the working life of Staithes.
They launched boats, baited and skeined lines, sold and prepared fish, looked after families and kept households going while men were at sea.
The Staithes bonnet is one of the most recognisable objects associated with this history.
The traditional bonnet was a working woman's headdress, and different colours could also indicate a woman's circumstances. White was traditional, while black could indicate the first year of mourning following the death of a husband. Lilac could be worn after that year of mourning was complete.
The bonnet is therefore more than an item of clothing.
It is part of the story of women's work, family life and tradition in Staithes.
And that tradition is still being kept alive by the small number of women who know how to make Staithes bonnets today.
The people in the photographs
Another theme running through the film is the importance of photographs – and of knowing who is actually in them.
One of the museum's pleasures is that photographs sometimes come with very little information.
Then somebody visits and recognises a face.
“That’s my grandad.”
“That’s my aunt.”
“That’s so-and-so.”
The museum can add a name to the photograph, sometimes decades after it was taken.
That information is enormously valuable.
A photograph passed down through two or three generations can eventually lose the names of the people pictured. Once those names disappear, part of the photograph's story disappears with them.
The museum provides somewhere for those memories to be recorded and shared.
So if you ever come across an old photograph of Staithes and recognise somebody, please tell us!
You may know something that nobody else does.
Artists, miners and a changing Staithes
The film also looks beyond fishing.
The arrival of the railway in 1883 made it easier for visitors and artists to reach the area. Staithes subsequently became associated with the artists who became known as the Staithes Group.
Dame Laura Knight is perhaps the best known of them.
The museum has examples of her work, and the film explores how she painted people she encountered in Staithes, including circus performers and local fishing families.
But while Staithes is often remembered today primarily as a fishing village, the film also explores another important part of its industrial history: mining.
Ironstone and alum were both important industries in the area.
There is evidence of mining going back much further, while the Victorian period saw large-scale industrial activity.
And alum production produced one of the stranger stories in the film.
Alum was used, among other things, to fix dyes. The manufacturing process was complicated – and involved urine.
Barrels of it were transported by ship into Staithes.
According to the story told in the film, captains were reluctant to admit what their cargo actually was. They would apparently claim they were carrying barrels of wine.
Which led to the inevitable response:
“You are taking the piss.”
It is an excellent example of the kind of small, memorable detail that can make industrial history stick in your head.
“Stease” – the language of Staithes
The film also includes the distinctive local speech of Staithes.
As John Cole explains:
“We’re here at Staithes Museum, but as locals know it, it’s Stease Museum.”
The film explores the idea that Staithes speech was more than simply an accent or dialect.
Local words and expressions could vary even between neighbouring communities.
There are examples of this local language in the museum's collection, including poems written in the Staithes dialect.
Hearing those words spoken aloud is important.
Written down on a page, dialect can look strange or unfamiliar. Hearing somebody who knows how it was spoken brings it back to life.
A museum made from many voices
One of the things we wanted this film to demonstrate is that there isn't one single story of Staithes.
There are lots of them.
There is the story of fishing.
There is the story of mining.
There is the story of women and family life.
There is the story of artists and visitors.
There are stories about individual families, individual boats and individual characters.
There are stories about Captain Cook and stories about the woman who baked scones for local children.
There are stories of tragedy, stories of hard work, stories of eccentricity and stories that are simply funny.
And there are still many stories that we don't know.
That is part of what makes a local museum exciting. The collection is not finished.
People continue to bring us photographs, memories, objects and information. They help us identify people in photographs. They tell us things their grandparents told them. They point out connections we hadn't noticed.
Local people telling their own stories is at the heart of what we are trying to do at Staithes Museum.
Come and watch it at the museum
The film is available to watch online, but if you are visiting Staithes, we would love you to come and watch it at the museum.
We have it playing on our big screen, giving visitors a chance to sit down and hear some of the stories from the collection.
It is particularly important for visitors who cannot manage the steps to the upper floors, but it is not exclusively for them.
You might discover a story you have never heard before.
You might recognise somebody in one of the photographs.
You might remember something your grandparents used to say.
Or you might simply find yourself wondering:
“Hmm, what's the story with that?”
And that's a very good place to start.
Thank you
We are enormously grateful to Blow Your Trumpet Films for making this film.
They have done a brilliant job of bringing together the voices, memories and stories of Staithes and creating something that works both as an online film and as an experience within the museum.
We would also like to thank the North York Moors National Park Authority for funding this project and supporting our work to make the museum's stories more accessible.
And, most importantly, thank you to everyone who gave their time, memories and knowledge to the film.
A museum is made up of objects, but the meaning of those objects comes from people.
This film is another way of making those connections visible – and making sure that more people can hear the stories, whether they can climb the museum steps or not.
Watch the film above, or come into Staithes Museum and see it on the big screen.
We'd love to see you.
Staithes Museum
Free entry | Open daily 10.30am–4.15pm
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