Fishing farming and tourism in the early Filey - 1805
Filey fishermen are mentioned in ancient documents
long before any are known at Scarborough. Even
today, some old Scarborough fishing families have
Filey roots. And yet Filey was as much a farming
community as a haven of the sea, with its great
common fields stretching west of the hilltop church
.Nobody quite knows why the church is next to the
fields, while the village is across a deep ravine,
distant from them, and even had its own St
Bartholomews Chapel . They called the Saint
"Bartilmewe" for short and his saint's day marked the
start of the busy fishing season. And that is the way
it was for centuries, fishing and farming.
A visitor in 1805 saw signs of change .He described
Filey as a neat fishing town, consisting chiefly of
one street. The inhabitants were remarkable for their
sobriety and industry and for their cordiality as
neighbours. Annually they fitted out vessels for the
herring season on the Yarmouth coast . The great brigg
projected near a quarter of a mile into the sea but he
thought that the sands were the finest on this
coast.. Filey was being resorted to in the summer
season by numerous parties from Scarborough and
Bridlington. The inviting scenery and the advantages
for sea bathing would render it one of the first
places of that description in the north of England
Suitable buildings were already being erected for the
reception of permanent visitors. However, these
accomodations were few and he thought them unlikely to
be increased. He was wrong.
John Rushton
OTHER ARTICLES
• Sea shanties and the filey Fishermen's choir
• Filey and its early fishing industry
• The history of the herring fishing in the North Sea
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Trawling and overfishing - Filey fishing
• The history of the Scarborough fishing industry
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
• Suzanne Pollard and her Filey Fishing relatives
• Church first and Church last - Filey methodists and St Oswald's
• Filey fishermen in 1862 - yawls and cobles
• Drink and alcohol in the Filey fishing community
• An early history of Filey and its fishing community
• Luggers and yawls in the filey fishing industry
• The Crimlisk fishing family history in Scarborough Filey and Hull
• Children of the fishing families in Scarborough
• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards
• Tommy Rowley - stories about loss of life at sea
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