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Sandsend NotesA coast notebook, Staithes to Robin Hood’s Bay

Section · 11 notes

Stone and trade: what was cut out of these cliffs

Alum, jet and stone. The trades that ate into these cliffs, and the ruin that still marks the entrance to the harbour.

Weathered shale terraces of an old alum quarry stepping down a cliff face towards a grey sea under low cloud

This coast was industrial long before it was scenic. Alum shale was quarried, burned, steeped and boiled here for two and a half centuries; jet, a fossil wood found in the same cliffs, was carved into mourning jewellery and sold across Victorian Europe. The headland above the harbour carries the ruin of an abbey older than either trade.

Four notes cover the workings, the stone, the abbey headland and the wooded estate valley behind Sandsend where the two becks come down.

The 11 notes in this section

Stone & Trade
  1. Roofless gothic arches of Whitby Abbey standing on a bare clifftop against a pale sky with grass and gravestones around

    · Heritage note

    Whitby Abbey and the stairs that climb to it

    A double monastery, a synod, a dissolution and a ruin left standing as a seamark: the layers of the East Cliff headland.

  2. Polished black jet beads and an unworked rough piece of fossil wood laid on a workbench beside small carving tools

    · Trade note

    Whitby jet, a fossil wood turned into mourning jewellery

    A black stone that is not a stone: how fossilised wood from these cliffs became a Victorian industry, and what remains of it.

  3. Stepped spoil terraces of a former alum quarry cut into a coastal hillside with rough grass and exposed grey shale

    · Trade note

    The alum coast: how a cliff was turned into a chemical works

    Shale quarried, burned for months, steeped, boiled and crystallised: the industry that cut the terraces still visible north of Sandsend.

  4. Beck running over stones through deep broadleaf woodland with mossy banks and a stone bridge arch in the background

    · Estate note

    Mulgrave Woods and the two becks behind Sandsend

    Behind the sea front, a private estate valley with two becks, an old castle ruin and a walking access that is not open every day.

  5. Harbour cottages packed along a narrow quay under a dark headland, the fishermen’s shore

    · Trade note

    Ganseys: the coast’s knitted armour

    Seamless, navy and patterned in knit and purl: the sweater that kept a fishing shore warm, and the craft that kept it.

  6. Harbour wall and moored boats at dusk, the old working quay of a fishing port

    · Trade note

    Games of chance, and the port that lived by them

    A coast that staked its boats on the weather was always going to make a game of waiting.

  7. A row of small stone funeral houses with red painted friezes set into a dry cliff face above terraced slopes, photographed in flat late-afternoon light from the opposite ridge.

    · Heritage note

    Cultural Travel in Northern Peru: A Reader's Guide

    Cultural travel in northern Peru means moving slowly through the cloud forest and the dry western slopes of the Andes, spending time at archaeological sites rather than passing through them.

  8. Late afternoon light on the eroded taipa wall of Paderne Castle, seen from the path below, with the Quarteira river valley behind and the irregular line of the rampart filling the frame.

    · Heritage note

    Reading Algarve monuments: Sagres, Milreu, Paderne

    At Sagres, Milreu and Paderne the visitor stands in front of three different problems.

  9. Late afternoon light on the concrete minaret and dome of Kobe Mosque seen from a narrow sloping street in Kitano-cho, shot from below with the old foreign houses in the foreground.

    · Heritage note

    Kobe Mosque: Japan's first mosque, opened 1935

    Kobe Mosque opened in October 1935, the first mosque built in Japan.

  10. A low limestone quarry face at the edge of woodland near Geruge, late afternoon light raking across tool marks, a mossy dry-stone wall running out of frame to the right.

    · Heritage note

    Reading ruined walls in the Jura

    Ruined walls are a record of work, not only of war.

  11. A notary's desk in a Polish town office, late morning light through a tall window, an open land register file and a pen beside a folded deed, medium shot from the side.

    · Estate note

    Buying a house in Poland: what German buyers ask

    Buying a house in Poland is a notarial process, not a handshake.

The other sections of the notebook: Shore & Village, Paths & Rails, At the Table.