Marine Drive was planned as both a tourist attraction, linking both of Scarborough’s bays, and an important coastal defence, protecting the headland from further erosion. The idea appealed to the Council, and work officially began on 30th March 1897, when the Mayor laid the foundation stone. The council expected the project to last three years and cost around £70,000, but repeated damage by storms sent costs spiralling and set back deadlines by years.
The fierce storm in January 1905 caused the most serious delays. The Council had planned for a summer opening by the Prince of Wales that year, and locals had been allowed to walk the road that very month. The ‘last block’ had been laid by the Mayoress in October 1904. But the force of the storm waves devastated the roadway, which was awaiting surfacing, destroyed workers’ huts and equipment, and left large cracks in the sea wall. The same storm also destroyed the 300m (1,000 ft) long Scarborough North Pier, which had stood since 1869.
Marine Drive was finally opened on August 5th 1908. It had actually been in use since April of that year. Over eleven years in construction and costing over £120,000 at opening, the event was marked by a royal ceremony. The Duke of Connaught (brother of the King) declared the road open, telling locals that while it had ‘cost much in time, money, and anxiety … they could be proud of having made one of the finest drives certainly in the United Kingdom, if not possibly the world.’
The road was 1,261m (1,379 yards) long, with a sea wall 12.2m (40 ft) high, 9.1m (30 ft) wide at the bottom and 3m (10 ft) at the top, built out of 14,000 blocks, weighing between two and nine tons each. At each end stood a toll house, collecting the one penny toll, until it was suspended during the Second World War.
This century, a new concrete wall and concrete rock armour, each block weighing fifteen tons, were installed to protect the headland for decades to come.
