Bempton cliffs - history egg collecting and wildlife
This article is based upon an article written in the 1920s. It explores the bird collecting industry around the cliffs at Bempton. Nowadays the Bempton Cliffs are a protected area.
Bempton cliffs and its natural wildlife have existed since time began. But it first became famous when a gentleman called Mr Wade visited the area in the 19th century. He climbed the cliffs and had the heart of a sailor yet he was educated enough to write down what he saw. He wrote:
"To the tripper and the ordinary visitor all the birds look much alike, and yet they are of various species. There are kittiwakes and puffins and gulls and herring gulls and razorbills and guillemots".
"If the birds all look alike, so do the cliffs, and yet these have their distinctive names and breeding places. Such names as Pigeons Hole, Weather Castle, Coffee Mill, tell of peculiarities in the shape of the cliffs, or of the birds, many of which have been handed down from father to son. Other names are White Wing” because a white guillemot was seen there; “white bread loaf” because a man in distress begged of a climber who promised him the proceeds from this ledge, with which he bought the first white breadloaf he had had for some months."
At one time every bay from Bempton to Flamborough was packed with a breeding population of birds. The need for conservation was evident. Kittihawks were in demand for their skin ornaments and were ruthlessly shot down. In 1880 all wild birds were protected between 1 March and 1 August. This was largely as a result of the pressure from Mr Christopher Sykes MP.
The conservation methods were opposed by the Flamborough fishing communities. They pleaded that they needed to control the population because their livelihood was been taken from them. The birds ate too many fish. In truth the fishing communities just enjoyed the rents they received from the executioners. Culling was a source of money for them.
The rights to collect eggs laid with the farmers who owned the land. They granted men who worked for them rights to harvest eggs.
One old climber told Mr Wade, how "Only two men used to go out, the one being let down and pulled up by the other, and he remembers how, when a boy, he was taken out to coil up the ropes and when his father found the weight too much for him he would be called to lend a hand and pull till the climber reached a place where the weight was taken off the man at the top."
A good proportion of the eggs in the 1920s were used for food. Some were applied to the process of dressing patent leather. Competition has raised prices - especially of rare specimens.
Sources
- Scarborough Mercury 15 July 1927.
OTHER ARTICLES
• The history of the Scarborough fishing industry
• The history of the herring fishing in the North Sea
• The Smuggling of contraband and the coastguard in Flamborough
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• Suzanne Pollard and her Filey Fishing relatives
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• Instructions to sailors - Flamborough Head
• Children of the fishing families in Scarborough
• The fishing community in Flamborough head - superstition and bad luck
• Primitive Methodism amongst the Scarborough Filey and Flamborough fishing communities
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Sea shanties and the filey Fishermen's choir
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
• Luggers and yawls in the filey fishing industry
• An early history of Filey and its fishing community
• Captain Cook and his early life in Staithes and Whitby
• Women working in the Scarborough fishing industry
• Robin Hood's Bay - The Storm family website
• Famous fishing families - the Whitby Storr family and the Leadleys
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