Whitby landslip - Henrietta Street
Haggerlythe, the northern continuation of Church Street, under its new name of 'Henrietta Street', given to it in 1761, in honour of the second Lady of Nathaniel Cholmley, who had won the esteem of Whitby folk by providing them with the Town Hall - still extant - became quite a fashionable quarter, and upwards of 1,000 people are stated to have lived in it. Its popularity was of short duration, for in 1787 it almost disappeared, as the following contemparary account from "The Universal Magazine" records:-
"The eastern extremity of the town of Whitby is situated on strata of allum rock and freestone, covered with a lose soil, that hath gradually accumulated to a depth by fourteen feet by lapses in wet seasons, from a high steep cliff running parallel to and at a small distance from the edge of the precipice next to the sea. This has imperceptibly formed an esplanade three hundred yards long and eighty in breadth on which in the year 1761 the foundations of a regular street were laid - the building having since rapidly increased to the number 130, containing above 1,000 inhabitants.
"On the north-east of this plain stood a three-gun battery, part of which, in 1785, sliding into the sea, the cannon were removed, at the same time a narrow deep chasm of considerable length was observed to run behind the houses in a line with the base of the high cliff. Into this aperture, the rainwater entering to co-operate with the innumerable quick springs below, the seeds of destruction were profusely sown and a catastrophe precipitated.[note 1]
"At midnight, a strong new-built quay supporting a pile of buildings eighty feet above the margin of the sea , unable to sustain the pressure of the earth above, menaced approaching danger. The people had hardly time to escape with their clothes before it bowed and fell with a thundering crash followed by a large mass of earth, intermixed with stones of three to six tons in weight. Five houses more soon shared the same fate, torn from others which were left impending in different inclinations over the tremendous precipice. Next morning presented a most affecting scene - buildings parting from their ajoining ones forming rents from their roofs to their foundations several feet wide, others partly gone, leaving their unsupported walls and hanging rafters to follow; and to add to this distress, weighty portions of earth and stones began to descend from the high cliffe upon the houses situated at its foot. It was now dangerous to advance near; the back buildings were soon buried, and the front impelled towards the street overhanging their bases, and seeming to threaten the acceleration of those on the opposite side over the wasting rock.
"One hundred and ninety-six families have been rendered destitute in this inclement season of the year, escaping half naked from the wreck without house, fire or food.
"The feeling heart will easily imagine how distressing the appearance of numbers of of the sick and dying must be, carried by their friends, only to expire in the first hospitable place that would afford them shelter.
A further serious landslip occurred on Wednesday, December 15th, 1870, the first indication on that occasion being the falling of plaster in the houses about eleven o'clock at night. An alarm was raised and people began to remove their goods, which soon littered the lower end of Henrietta Street and the top end of Church Street. The ground continued to move during the whole of the following day, and large fissures in the ground above gave evidence of greater destruction. Many thousands of tons of earth from the field between the church-yard and the sea fell on the scar. The top building of the street, Mr Harland's pipe factory, and his adjoining house, were soon a complete ruin. The Spa Ladder was lifted by outward pressure off the ground and its top end pointed skywards. In all a dozen houses were rendered untenable and families were rendered homeless.
There was another movement in March, 1923 , the whole of the ground between the topmost house in Henrietta Street and the Cliff beyond the Spa Ladder being affected. The Spa Ladder was irreparably damaged , and was held in position by the stout steel hawsers which anchored it to the cliff and to the East Pier. As the cliff was forced over the ironstone strata, a seam of cliff coal fell to the beach, and this was eagerly picked up, despite the risk from falling earth and stones.
NOTES
1. Such catastrophes are inevitable where the sub-stratum is partly composed of boulder clay. about 1683 the whole village of Runswick except one house, sank down in the night, towards the sea. No lives were lost, as some inhabitants were "waking a corpse" and alarmed the rest.
In 1829 the cliff at kettleness gave way and the whole place glided gradually towards the sea. The inhabitants, however, were all saved, being taken on board a vessel lying off for alum, but the entire village was wrecked.
in 1858, the Wreckhills iron smelting works in Ruinswick Bay collapsed, owing to a landslide, and were destroyed.
OTHER ARTICLES
• Famous fishing families - the Whitby Storr family and the Leadleys
• Shipbuilding at Scarborough - the wooden barques and schooners
• The Yorkshire smuggler - the smuggling of contraband
• Tommy Rowley - stories about loss of life at sea
• Shipping Ironstone down the coast by John Rushton
• Stories from Robin Hood's Bay and Whitby
• History of the Whitby whaling industry
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• Sea shanties and the filey Fishermen's choir
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Captain Cook and his early life in Staithes and Whitby
• Runswick Bay superstitions - caves and a landslip
• Robin Hood's Bay - The Storm family website
• Church first and Church last - Filey methodists and St Oswald's
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• The fishermen and fisheries of Robin Hood's Bay in 1838
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
HOW TO HELP THIS WEBSITE: Google rates pages posted on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites very highly. So if you have found this site useful please post it using the buttons below.
Tweet