Bridlington, June 2023

Welcome to this series of articles about a few days break in and around Bridlington in the English County of Yorkshire.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

Holidays and Days Out in the UK Index

Bridlington Priory

Monday 5 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we went for a look at the Priory.

Bridlington Priory was established as a monastery of Augustinian Canons Regular in 1113. It was built over the site of a former Saxon church and nunnery.

It held the earthly remains of John Twenge, otherwise known as St John of Bridlington. Born in the nearby village of Thwing in the year 1320, he joined the monks after studying at Oxford. He held several offices during his time there, serving as Prior for 17 years before his death in 1379. Several miracles have been attributed to him. He is supposed to have changed water to wine once and on another occasion he appeared to a group of 5 fishermen from Hartlepoole whose ship was in danger of being swamped in rough seas and he brought them safely to shore, whereupon they left the ship at the harbour and rushed off to the Priory to thank him. I'm being careful not to comment... Anyway he became the last Englishman to be canonised as a saint before Henry VIII split up from the Catholic Church.

There is an appliqué of twelve panels, depicting the history of the Priory. This is an embroidery technique, but with the panels in 3D rather than a flat embroidered surface like the Bayeux Tapestry for instance. Having survived the Dissolution and the destruction of some 3/4 of its buildings, it was lucky to survive its use as an arsenal just over 100 years later. Buildings and explosives do not tend to go well together...

The organ dates from 1889 by Belgian firm Anneessens and was originally a three-manual organ. It came complete with a spectacularly large low-toned pipe for Bottom-C, the reed being 32 feet long and the pipe two feet in diameter. Rebuilds were necessary at various times during the 20 century and it was fully restored and enlarged 2004-2006.

A mind-boggling pedal board - the most I've ever played was a 25-key two octave pedalboard on a Hammond organ whilst I was learning to play in the practice rooms at Swanns shop in Manchester during the early 1970s. An octave is 12 keys but the extra one was to allow a lowest note of low C and a high note of middle C.

The Priory plays host to a few other musicians too...

All that music has soothed this savage beast by the looks of it.

We found several of these little mice - the trademarks of Robert "Mouseman" Thompson.

The great west window brings our exploration to an end.

Bridlington, 2023 Index
English Churches and Cathedrals Index

Bridlington, Yorkshire, 3-8 June 2023

Saturday 3 June 2023. After Great Yarmouth we had just two days at home then set off for Bridlington, again on the east coast. Stand by for more icicles...

We had two days at home to wash clothes, refuel the car and call in to visit my Mum before heading out again across the country but this time more or less in a straight line across from West to East.

The weather was pretty similar to Great Yarmouth with the exception that the sun was also hiding from us. A mix of grey skies, great gusts of wind and the occasional flying seagull dropping somewhere alarmingly close meant layering up. T-shirt, hoodie and lightweight jacket wasn't cutting it. I bought a new heavier jacket before the shivering stopped. I started to sketch this scene of the harbour, sitting on a bench on one of the narrow piers with a "pirate" ship taking punters on a "10-minute cruise in the bay" from just behind me.That would be 2 minutes out of the harbour wall, 3 minutes along the bay, with 5 minutes doing the same in reverse then. At least it was twice as long as you got on a Speedboat ride...

We opted for a 2.5 hour cruise on the newly refurbished Yorkshire Belle to see the seabirds at Bempton Cliffs. This was more like it. We sat on the foredeck, huddled up against the wind, watching the odd seal surface briefly before diving to shout to its mates "No... still cold!". One did a spectacular backflip right next to us, luckily away from the boat - I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a seal landing on my lap! Then past Flamborough Lighthouse and the commentary started to mention birds, guillemots, kittywakes, gannets and occasionally the odd puffin. I couldn't tell them from guillemots unless you managed to spot the distinctive beak. They are a lot smaller than people think. Perhaps because they look a bit like penguins you expect them to be that sort of size. Anyway, whenever the commentator announced a puffin there was a chorus of "Oh yes! There!" whilst I was looking all over the place, spotting a bird, looking for the beak only to find it was a gull of some sort...

Our time at the cliffs came to an end and we turned round for the trip back. We gave up our spot and went into the enclosed deck where the heady odour of oil and marine fuel started to waft across us. Just out of dry dock, the boat had sprung an oil leak. We made it back to Bridlington and the Yorkshire Belle stayed where it was for the next few days whilst it got sorted out. As I stepped onto the pier a seagull welcomed me back. Well... front actually... "Oh! That's lucky!" called a middle-aged chap. "Yes, this too!" I laughed, nudging him over the edge of the pier. "Make a wish!" I advised just before he hit the water... (Disclaimer: The later part of this paragraph may not be strictly true...)

Monday 5 June 2023. We caught a bus out to Bridlington Old Town and Priory. I'll deal with the Priory in a separate article. Bridlington Old Town turned out to be just the one street. It was Monday. Most of the shops are closed on Monday... Never mind, we reached the end of the road and then crossed a main road upon which we were at the gates to the Priory.

The remaining bits of the Priory survived the Reformation being kept in use as a parish church. This was the Gateway to the Priory that apparently housed a museum. We didn't know that at the time...

Four beautiful white horses were being groomed on the green before the Priory. When we came back out later, a white horse-drawn hearse was standing waiting to be hitched up.

Plein air sketch of the harbour. I did some of the pencil bits in situ but it was numbingly cold. Too cold to sit for more than 30 minutes and I took the photo seen at the top of the page, then did quite a lot in the hotel bar, squinting at the tiny screen of my phone. I finished the last third of the pencilling on our last day. Luckily my original bench was free. Actually they were all free, no-one else was so foolish as to sit in the cold and wind. I did the colour in the bar on the last night.

Bridlington, 2023 Index

Scarborough With A Hint Of Bridlington.

We had a weekend away this week, travelling to Bridlington on Friday for two nights. We stayed at a nice enough B&B which was just a bit let down by the shower unit in our room. This was plumbed straight into the water supply. This meant that there were separate hot and cold taps and the room was at the end of a long corridor so no matter where or how you set the taps, the water falling on you alternated every few seconds between freezing cold and scalding hot... Ah well, it was cheap and cheerful - if you don't count the owner's Dad who answered the door at night by saying "I hope you haven't woken our granddaughter up!!!"

I had a camera free day on Friday which is when we took advantage of some bright sunny weather in Bridlington. I had the sketch pad with me but I didn't get round to doing anything with it all weekend - Brid was crowded and seating by the harbour was at a premium and there were hundreds of people trying to eat fish and chips before the somewhat aggressive seagulls got them first. Not everyone succeeded... I didn't fancy spending an hour sketching only for a blob of unmentionable to obscure the page, so I apologetically offer this effort from 1994.

If you want to eat fish and chips then Bridlington is your place. There is probably one fish and chip shop for every seagull. This is actually necessary as the amount of repeat trade they get must be incredible from people who have had (helpful hint on seagull fave method coming) a seagull fly down over their shoulder and land in the tray of fish and chips, snatching a beakful and taking off with the probable spilling of the rest of the tray for other seagulls to fight over.

We found an Italian restaurant called Leoz. Highly recommended! I had the chicken stroganoff and it was delicious.

On Saturday we decided to leave the car and take a bus to Scarborough. Between the two bus stations of Bridlington and Scarborough it is 17.1 miles. This should take around 30 minutes or less, but the bus does not exactly go straight there. The timetable suggested an hour and 25 minutes, but it took quite a bit longer than that in the event. We missed out on the front seats going, but managed to get them coming back. Some of the roads it turned aside onto to reach holiday camps were better than a ride on the roller coaster!

When we reached Scarborough the first building of note that I saw as we walked down from the bus station was this theatre. The original Stephen Joseph Theatre was Britain's first theatre in the round and was built on the first floor of the public library. It moved to a former boys' high school and subsequently in 1988 following the closure of the Odeon Cinema it moved here, opening in 1996.

We walked downhill past the theatre and along a shopping street, cutting off down a side road and finding ourselves near the Grand Hotel. There was a funicular railway going down the cliff to the beach but we opted to take the strenuous route - this being much less strenuous going down than coming up - where we did take the funicular!

So we set off down these steps, admiring the litter and the way that, at the bottom, the handrail stopped being black and instead was seagull-poo coloured to the encrusted state that the end of the railing had corroded altogether and had dropped off.

Scarborough has a South Bay and a North Bay. To someone who lives on the west coast like me, directions on the east coast always seem the wrong way round. Between the two bays is a huge but ruinous 12th century castle high on its hill which was once a hillfort from the Iron Age, a Roman signal point and the home of Norse invaders. A busy spot. In fact all of Scarborough seems a busy spot. There was hardly room on the beach for all the families, couples, and sunbathers to swing a bucket and spade. People lean on each side of a windbreak, at least half of them having underpaid for the privilege.

Amusement arcades line the other side of the road, facing the beach and harbour. They look like Blackpool of yesterday - modern fronts on the ground floor of old buildings. Yet sadly, the amusements are the modern boring collection of cranes and two pence piece pushers with the occasional video shoot-out or racing game. Where did all those pinballs go, which I so loved as a boy and which required skill of reflexes and knowledge of the laws of physics rather than mastery of a remembered past sequence?

The harbour holds a collection of boats from working fishing boats to day trip or half-hour trips round the bays. A marina serves those rich folks who like to boast they "have a boat at the seaside" but rarely can be bothered to move them.

It all makes for a very picturesque scene. In fact multitudes of scenes of water, old buildings, modern amusements, the inevitable fish and chips, and families relaxing.

There are so many architectural styles within a short stretch of road that it is hard to make sense of it. Odd little bits strike you as either pleasing or incongruous. Some manage both at the same time.

On the whole I quite liked it. There were plenty of benches to sit on without having to pay to hire a deck chair - though they were well over-subscribed and finding an empty one was usually the precursor to turning away again as some other foot-weary person or group dived upon the few inches of bare wooden slats.

In the harbour, a single formidable chunk of membrane and tentacles was pulsating and moving slowly round in circles, its progress impeded by the strength of the incoming tide matching its ability to swim against it. It may have been somewhat mollified by the steady and continuing chorus of exclamations and excited shouts of "Oh! Look!" that it caused.

We bought a drink at a cafe and sat on the harbour wall whilst we cooled off and rested our feet. Well... rested our feet anyway. There was no shade on the harbour wall and I was turning a splendid shade of bright red on this, our second day in the sun.

Just after the harbour is this delightful Coastguards' Hut. Do a search and you will find lots of photos of it but finding any textual references will take longer than I cared to spend. Very strange - you'd have thought someone would have thought it worthwhile to say something about it...

Crammed into the smallish space between the harbour and Coast Guard Station is a small funfair with a handful of rides mainly aimed at children.

We retraced our steps until we reached the flight of steps and then we stepped smartly on until we reached the funicular railway - known as the Central Tramway Company. The car was full, I wasn't able to get to the window to take a photo of the other car coming down towards us. There's something about funiculars that always appeals to me. The theory is that the weight of the descending car matches as near as possible the weight of the ascending car and therefore the power needed to operate is not as great as might be required for a single lift.

We had lunch and a quick look round the shops (not my idea...) and then caught the bus back to Bridlington. This time we managed to get the front seat upstairs and it was a fun ride back via all the side roads and holiday parks until we arrived back at Bridlington bus station.

We got back to find a collection of classic cars parked near the harbour, their owners sitting by them, listening to a karaoke set-up. Unfortunately as we got there we were "treated" to a man and woman singing Those Were The Days as a duet. It certainly wasn't how I remembered those days... We decided on an ice cream and the young girl serving laughed out loud when I asked for two cones and two pairs of ear plugs. We sat on the harbour wall for a while until a seagull, sated with a surfeit of fish and chips decided to splatter all over Miss Franny's hand... "Ooh, that's lucky!" I said, a second before the backhander...

Vintage Postcard Time No.1

Today we'll take a look at some old postcards from my collection. These have all come from antique stalls at GB Antiques in Lancaster from a recent visit. The Edwardians were great ones for postcards. There was no email and alternatives were expensive. Postcards were a little cheaper than writing a letter and much cheaper than sending a telegram. Telephones had been invented in the 1870s but only started to become popular after World War One when prices came down and in any case telephones that you could carry in your pocket were a long way off yet.

Cameras too were expensive and few and far between as yet. Telephones in the early 1900s were totally rubbish at taking photos. To take photos of people on the not-very-sensitive film of the day, they had to sit still for anything up to two minutes. Many commercial photographers would have special clamps that they would attach to the back of your head so you couldn't move whilst the photo was taken. If you were of a mischievous bent, you could look one way for half the time and then the other way for the other half whilst your head remained steady in the clamp and the photo would look like you had two pupils in each eye! Try doing that with you iPhone! Hah! So with no telephones and very few cameras, people on holiday bought postcards. Sometimes to send to their friends saying things like "Wish you were here" - mostly a lie, but it was cheaper if you only wrote four words... Sometimes, in fact many times, postcards were bought to be kept by the buyer and stuck into an album as a souvenir of the holiday. Which explains why there are so many early postcards with no writing on them. Like this one of Bridlington.

Move up the coast from Bridlington and you come to Scarborough. This card too has not been used. People would hold postcard parties where postcard albums were passed round and used to re-live the excitement of a holiday. Later you would take your own photos and show friends and family your photos on slide film, with a projector and screen in a darkened room. Oh what fun we had... Now we don't have to do that as there are new ways through technology of boring our friends and even people we don't know, via websites and writing er... blogs... er... let's move on!

Postcard manufacturers realised that they could use more than one view on a single card in an attempt to appeal to the natural stinginess of some holiday makers. This card was sent between two sisters who it seems had each gone on holiday but to different places. The postmark is a little indistinct but it was sent on 17 August in either 1913 or 1915. I suspect 1913 really because the other sister had sailed to the Isle of Man and during wartime that might have been a bit more risky! The card was sent care of the recipient's guest house in Douglas.

The message reads: "Dear Sister," (Perhaps the sender was a bit forgetful and couldn't remember her sister's name?) "We arrived safely after a pleasant journey. Are enjoying ourselves immensely. Hope you are doing the same and I hope you had a pleasant voyage. Give my kindest regards to Janey. Your loving sis, Alice xxxxxxxxxxx" (Alice obviously was worried her sister might also be forgetful and either forget she had a sister or didn't realise that Alice was her sister?)

A postcard of Great Yarmouth with hand colouring and a painted cloudscape. Buildings and other details have been picked out in ink. These tricks of the trade are one of the joys of collecting old postcards for me. Night time shots that are just darkened and painted over photos that were taken in broad daylight, with obvious shadows from the sun, the moon in the wrong direction and cars with headlights shining the wrong way are great fun. This card has not been written on or sent through the post, so another collector's item.

A between the wars postcard showing The Pier and Sands, New Brighton. The water is the River Mersey rather than the sea and it's Liverpool that you can see across on the far bank. A collection of masts or cranes and derricks on the left side are on Liverpool Docks. The pier acts as a means of boarding steamers for a trip across the river or up and down the coast.

The card was sent by a child to her aunt in Deepdale, Preston on 12 August 1935. It reads: "Dear Aunty, We landed quite safely and the weather is lovely and we are having a glorious time. We have been in the water all the time and the lodgings are posh. Yours sincerely, Jean." It was quite common for Lancashire folks to say "landed" meaning simply "arrived". I suspect Jean didn't fly from Preston to New Brighton... Also to many people from industrial towns, guest houses did seem posh - some had a toilet on every landing for Pete's sake! At this time many people would still be using a toilet in a little out-house in the back yard.

Another unused card showing the Saxon water mill at Guy's Cliffe in Warwickshire. Postcards were produced at first by small family-owned studios by a single photographer, but then as they became more and more popular some very large firms came into being, employing photographers to take photographs of a region or even around the entire country. Francis Frith is still a very well known and recognisable brand. Tucks, Salmon, John Hinde Studios, Valentine & Sons, and many others sprang up to fulfil the demand.

A multi-view card by Valentines from Ilkley in Yorkshire sent on 10 September 1954 to a friend in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire. Somehow the card managed to get postmarked twice - once in Leeds and once, the day after, in... er... Ilford. Folks in Ilkley were obviously not quite sure where Lancashire was...? The postmark includes a post office advert that reads: "Save time. Buy 2½d stamps in books, 3'9d a book" (3 shillings and ninepence - 18.75 pence).

The message reads: "Ilkley 10/9/1954. Up north again, this time to Ilkley where my friends from Leeds have moved to. The country is wonderful round here isn't it? How are the ballet activities your way? I've been twice to Festival Ballet this summer. Bye now and best wishes from Pam."

To finish with for this article we'll go down to the far south of the country to Dover. On this card, sent in 1918, there are still masted sailing ships in Dover Harbour, though most of the vessels here sport the funnels of steam power. There is at least one paddle steamer with side paddle wheels to be found. The castle makes for a dramatic horizon towards the right of the photograph.

The card could easily be from a returning soldier, writing home to his mother in Glasgow. It was written in pencil in a very neat hand: "Dear Mother, I have arrived safe at Dover alright, so I am getting on champion. I met Mary at the station, so she was telling me that she doesn't like her new job. Well this is only a P.C. but I'll write a long letter on Sunday. I remain your affectionate J.M. Rae Dov(er)"