“It was like going into a dream”: Anne King remembers growing up around Staithes

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 that might never appear in an official history of the village.

Anne King was our first volunteer for this experiment. Anne, who was born in 1956, grew up at a farm beside the church in Hinderwell, but spent much of her childhood staying with her grandparents, Abraham and Violet Manship, at Glenview in Staithes, next to the Captain Cook pub. Her family connections reach deep into the village, and her memories bring together several generations of Staithes life.

Anne came into the museum for a conversation with Rosie, using a list of questions prepared beforehand as a starting point. The museum's second shop was temporarily transformed into a rather makeshift recording studio. Anne had looked through the questions before she arrived and was excited to think about her memories — and once the conversation started, the stories just kept coming.

The result is a wonderfully detailed portrait of a Staithes childhood.

The interview now forms part of the material included in the museum's audio guide, allowing visitors to hear Anne's memories alongside the photographs, objects and places that she remembers.

Growing up at Glenview

Anne was the eldest of six children, born within just seven years. With her mother busy looking after such a large family, Anne often stayed with her grandparents, Abraham and Violet Manship.

“My mum was so busy that she let me come and stay with Grandma, who lived at Glenview in Staithes, next to the Captain Cook pub. And it was a boarding house.”

The Manships were well known in Staithes. Abraham came from Norfolk in the 1840s, Anne believes, and the family became fish merchants. Violet grew up in Staithes after being taken in by a woman from Middlesbrough who worked as a housekeeper locally.

Violet was deeply involved in the Primitive Methodist chapel — the building which is now home to Staithes Museum — and chapel life was a central part of the family's world.

There were three chapels in the village: the Wesleyan, the Bethel and the Primitive Methodist chapel. Anne remembers that Sunday was treated very differently from the rest of the week.

“It was a very Methodist, strict family who did not do things on Sunday which were work. So you would never do knitting or other jobs on a Sunday. Sunday was really special.”

For Anne, the chapel was not simply a building. It was part of the rhythm of family and community life.

She remembers taking part in chapel anniversaries, something which terrified her as a shy child. Her grandmother made her practise what she would have to say.

Violet, in contrast, was anything but shy. Anne remembers her as a natural performer who sang, appeared on stage and read poems and stories in Yorkshire dialect.

“She was a very outgoing person who was a good performer. She performed on stage, she sang, she did Yorkshire readings in Yorkshire dialect.”

One particularly memorable image is of Violet dressed as Burlington Bertie, performing on stage in furs.

When Anne was eighteen, Violet asked her to open a village fête — probably another attempt to help her shy granddaughter gain confidence.

The family behind the Copper Kettle

Before becoming the Copper Kettle café, the family business may have begun as a bakehouse with a public oven where people could bring their own baking.

Anne remembers the building as the place where her mother and her aunts and uncles grew up.

“They all grew up in what is now the art gallery, the Copper Kettle Cafe.”

The family worked hard. The children helped in the café when they were home from school, and Anne remembers it as an extraordinarily busy place.

During the war years the café became an important part of village life, and the family was involved in supporting the community. By the early 1950s, tourism was beginning to make an impact and the family was able to send the children away to school after their primary education in the village.

The café itself served the sort of food you might expect from a traditional tearoom: cakes, biscuits, sandwiches and tea.

But Anne's strongest memory is not a particular menu. It is the smell.

“If you ever went into her house, it always smelt of baking. Every time you went to ginger nuts especially, always smelt of baking.”

That sensory detail is one of the things that makes oral history so valuable. A written account might tell us that a café sold cakes. Anne remembers what it smelled like.

“It was like sleeping in between a hippo and a horse”

Some of Anne's earliest memories are wonderfully vivid.

As a very small child she once slept between her grandparents at Glenview.

“It was like sleeping in between a hippo and a horse.”

She could hear the clock ticking beside her.

Outside, the garden contained an extraordinary collection of memories: a gypsy caravan, her grandfather making a medicinal preparation Anne remembers as “Scordith Throttle”, her grandmother singing, fires, food, brawn and tripe.

Her grandmother was sociable and knew people all over the area. Anne remembers being taken on outings to see performers such as Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch, and Frank Ifield. On Saturday mornings they went to Loftus for coffee with Violet's Methodist friends.

This is one of the recurring themes of Anne's memories: her grandmother was constantly connected to other people.

When Violet died, Anne remembers people saying:

“The heart went out of the village.”

Anne's description of her grandmother is perhaps the clearest indication of the kind of community she remembers:

“She was absolutely a community person and she would do anything for anyone. She did not die rich. She would give every last penny away.”

Auntie Jean, Uncle John and Dolphin Cottage

Anne's aunt Jean was another important figure in her childhood.

When Violet was too busy, Jean took Anne under her wing. Jean and her husband John lived at Dolphin Cottage in Church Street.

Jean was an excellent cook and knitter and later worked as a demonstrator for electrical cookers. John was a graphic designer and illustrator who studied at the Royal College of Art and later worked at the West of England College of Art and the University of the West of England.

Their first meeting sounds like something from a romantic film.

John came to the area on an art trip and stayed with Anne's grandmother at Glenview. He met Jean there, and Anne believes this was the beginning of their relationship.

“Uncle John fell in love with Auntie Jean, and this was their first date.”

Jean showed him around the village, and someone took a photograph of the pair.

Anne remembers visiting Dolphin Cottage, with its basket chairs, unusual décor and — most memorably — a red bathroom suite.

She also remembers the lime marmalade.

“They had lime marmalade for breakfast, which I absolutely loved to go and stay with them.”

John and Jean were involved in the Staithes Carnival, and John produced signs for it. That brings us to one of Anne's most remarkable memories.

“The whole carnival thing was unbelievable”

Anne's memories of Staithes Carnival are perhaps the most vivid part of the interview.

She was about five or six years old. She did not have a television at home, so the carnival represented something completely extraordinary.

“It was one of the first things that I'd seen where there was music, light, strange creatures. It was going like going into a dream.”

She remembered a huge Yellow Submarine displayed near what is now the Post Office, with the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine” playing.

There were enormous masks and costumes towering over the crowds.

“There was creatures like the great, big, huge masks, three times taller than a normal man.”

The procession featured the Glorious Gloucesters, who Anne remembers leading the way, and a man in a bearskin beside a huge drum.

“I'd never seen anything like it.”

For a child who had not grown up watching television, it was almost otherworldly.

Anne's memories also preserve a little network of Carnival organisers and village characters. She remembers hearing about Lillian Coburn as one of the prime movers behind the Carnival, with Gloria Wilson also involved.

Her uncle John was deeply involved in putting it together, making signs and knowing the people who took part.

These stories help place Staithes Carnival within the wider history of village organisations, amateur performance, community celebrations and local creativity.

A village full of characters

One of the pleasures of listening to Anne is the number of people who appear in her memories.

She remembers names such as Lovey, Dorcas, Titch and Tange, who was Coxswain of the lifeboat. There was Florrie Manship, related to Anne's grandfather, and Dinny, the organist at the Primitive Methodist chapel.

She remembers Harold Armstrong and Billy Verrill — and, wonderfully, a collection of nicknames:

“Cabbage, Shallow Bucket, all sorts of nicknames that people had.”

It is exactly this sort of information which is easily lost unless somebody records it. A nickname might never appear in a census, register or newspaper, but it can be enormously useful when trying to understand how people knew one another in a small community.

Singing in the chapel

Music runs throughout Anne's memories.

Her Uncle Tom could play the piano entirely by ear.

“He could play anything. So we always had singing around the piano.”

He also played in pubs around the area.

At the chapel, music was everywhere. Anne remembers being astonished by the singing because every hymn was sung in parts.

“I couldn't believe the singing all in parts. I'd never heard music where singing was in parts.”

She remembers the chapel being packed with people.

The family were also accomplished knitters and crocheters. Anne describes her grandmother's ability to make almost anything:

“She would do absolutely any item you could have — a hat, gloves, a poncho, antimacassars. Everything was knitted and crocheted.”

The knitting was not simply a practical skill. It was part of family identity and chapel culture.

Sticking, harvest festivals and long walks

Anne's memories also reveal the communal nature of ordinary activities.

One of her earliest memories is of going “sticking” with her grandmother at Dalehouse — collecting sticks for the fire.

There were perhaps fifteen or twenty people together, gathering wood and singing as they went.

She also remembers walking all the way to Roxby for a Harvest Festival. On the journey, her grandmother would point out the wildflowers.

These are small details, but they tell us a great deal about how people spent their time, how children learned about the landscape, and how work, social life and tradition overlapped.

Vin and the stories that stick in your memory

Anne's interview is full of memorable local characters, but few are as entertaining as Lavinia “Vin” Harrison.

Vin was a helper at the Post Office, cleaned the school and did domestic work. She was also, according to Anne, extremely tough.

One of the stories Anne remembers is that Vin papered a room while she had a broken arm.

She also had a memorable way with words.

“She would say things like, this knife is so blunt that you could ride bare arse to London on it.”

Vin kept her money in cash and, Anne remembers, eventually bought one of the new bungalows opposite the Co-op with savings she had kept at home.

Her brother Isaac lived with her. Anne remembers that he sometimes got confused by the new houses because they all looked alike.

“He often went home to the wrong bed, got in someone else's bedroom, and obviously gave them a bit of a shock.”

He also apparently believed that following the white line would lead him home.

These stories are affectionate rather than formal. They are exactly the kind of memories which give character to a village history.

The superstitions of everyday life

One of the most fascinating parts of Anne's interview concerns customs and beliefs which could easily disappear from living memory.

One tradition surrounded ironing.

If Vin or her sister-in-law Hannah Theaker came to help with the ironing, a crease in a sheet or pillowcase was considered very bad luck.

Anne remembers being told that it could mean someone would die at sea, or that there would be an accident.

Even now, the superstition has stayed with her:

“It still makes me think when I'm ironing anything, I try not to have a crease in the sheets or the bedding.”

For Anne, these beliefs were closely connected to the dangers of life in a fishing community.

“It was obviously fragile life being at sea and there was lots of traditions connected with that.”

It is a small example of how superstition could become woven into completely ordinary domestic tasks.

Death, mourning and the chapel

Anne also remembers an older funeral tradition which she believes no longer survives.

After her grandmother's death, the funeral procession travelled from Glenview to the chapel, with women wearing black shawls leading the way.

“It was a procession where I had not seen that before.”

Her grandmother had been deeply involved in chapel life, and one of the chapel ministers had actually lived with the family at Glenview. He conducted her funeral.

Anne remembers people walking together and singing hymns.

These customs connected home, chapel and community in ways which are difficult to imagine today.

The bridge, the boarding house and working visitors

Because Glenview was also a boarding house, Anne remembers people who came to Staithes to

work.

When the bridge was being dismantled, some of the workers stayed with her grandparents.

She remembers seeing men sitting along the stairs, talking together in their navy jumpers.

It is another glimpse of Staithes as a working village rather than simply a tourist destination: somewhere where people lived, worked, lodged and knew one another.

“Herring guts for garters”

Anne grew up partly in Hinderwell and partly in Staithes, and she remembers a friendly rivalry between the two communities.

The villages had their own insults and sayings.

One Hinderwell saying was:

“Hinderwell yaks are back of a wall, a spoonful of water’ll drown them all.”

The Staithes response was:

“Staithes yackers had herring guts for garters.”

Anne remembers there being “a bit of antagonism” between the two communities — though clearly with plenty of affection beneath it.

These sayings are part of the local dialect and folklore of the area, and they show how strongly people could identify with their own village.

Hearing Staithes dialect

Dialect is another important part of Anne's memories.

She remembers her father speaking very good local dialect and her grandmother performing poems in dialect.

Anne herself once gave two elderly men a lift to the Kirkleatham Museum. They spent the entire journey speaking to one another in dialect — and she could barely understand them.

“They spoke the whole way in dialect, and I could not tell what they were saying.”

She remembers only a few words now, including “hou thy wisht”, which meant “be quiet”, but she remembers how natural dialect conversation was for older generations.

Her grandmother had books of dialect poetry and was an accomplished performer.

For the museum's oral history project, memories such as these are particularly valuable because dialect is more than vocabulary. It carries rhythm, humour, identity and a way of seeing the world.

A community where people trusted one another

Anne's memories reach across several parts of local history: fishing, chapels, cafés, Carnival, schools, knitting, domestic work, family businesses, local characters, village rivalries and dialect.

But when asked what she remembers most strongly about Staithes, she comes back to one thing: the community itself.

She remembers a time when most people lived down in the village and the fishing community and chapels brought people together.

“I feel very lucky to have known the closeness of Staithes and the knitting and the chapel.”

And, perhaps most importantly:

“Everyone felt like they were in a bigger family and they could trust each other massively. There was a lot of trust.”

That is a powerful description of a village community, but it is also a reminder of why oral history matters.

Photographs can show us the Carnival procession. Objects can tell us what people made and used. Documents can give us names and dates. But it takes somebody like Anne to tell us what it felt like to be a six-year-old child seeing the Carnival for the first time, to remember the smell of ginger nuts baking at the Copper Kettle, to explain why a crease in a bedsheet was frightening, or to describe the bewilderment of hearing a chapel congregation singing in harmony.

From memories into the archive

Anne's interview was the first test of a new idea at Staithes Museum: recording the memories of people who know the village from personal experience.

We hope that this will become a growing collection of oral histories documenting Staithes life — not simply major events, but the everyday experiences and stories which help explain how the village worked.

Anne's interview is now preserved as part of the museum's audio guide, where visitors can hear these stories while exploring Staithes and the museum itself.

Her memories also provide a starting point for further research. The interview touches on the Manship family, Abraham and Violet Manship, the Copper Kettle Café, Glenview, Dolphin Cottage, Staithes Carnival, the Primitive Methodist chapel, Bethel Chapel, the Wesleyan Chapel, Staithes fishing families, lifeboat history, local nicknames, Yorkshire dialect, knitting and crafts, village schools, Harvest Festival traditions, local superstitions, Hinderwell and Staithes rivalry, and many individual residents whose names appear in Anne's memories.

There are, no doubt, more stories waiting to be found.

And perhaps that is the most exciting part of an oral history archive: one person's memory can be the clue that leads someone else to a photograph, a family connection, a newspaper report, an object in a collection — or another story entirely.