In Unfamiliar England: A Record of a Seven Thousand Mile Tour by Motor of the Unfrequented Nooks and Corners, and the Shrines of Especial Interest, in England; With Incursions into Scotland and Ireland.Murphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
History
In Unfamiliar England: A Record of a Seven Thousand Mile Tour by Motor of the Unfrequented Nooks and Corners, and the Shrines of Especial Interest, in England; With Incursions into Scotland and Ireland.
Murphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
Great Britain -- Description and travel
On the following day we again wander about the old-world streets of
the town, which we find ourselves loath to leave. The morning's catch
is just in at the fish-market and the finny tribes of all degrees
are sorted on the pavement and sold to the townspeople. The fishing
industry of Whitby is now on a small scale only; in former days it
constituted a source of some wealth. The ballad writer celebrating
Robin Hood's visit to Whitby gives this very good reason:
"The fishermen more money have
Than any merchants two or three."
And thus the sturdy highwayman found it easy to replenish his exchequer
from the fat purses of Whitby folk. It may be, though, that the
isolated situation of the town between the wild moors and the sea, and
its good harbor for small vessels, made the occupation of smuggling
especially profitable, and the wealth of the old-time citizens of
Whitby may have been augmented by this practice.
[Illustration: IN OLD WHITBY.
From Original Painting by R. E. Morrison, Royal Cambrian Academy, 1908.]
Our route out of the town led through the Cleveland Hills, the roughest
and loneliest of the Yorkshire moors. We climbed many steep, rugged
hills and dropped down sharp, dangerous slopes; one will hardly
find elsewhere in England a country scored more deeply by narrow
valleys. There is little of life on the twenty-five miles of road to
Guisborough, where one comes out of the moor into the wide valley
of the Tees. Guisborough is a bleak little town whose beautiful
surroundings have been marred by the mines. Of its ancient priory,
there remains only the magnificent eastern wall, pierced nearly to the
top by tall lancet windows from which the stone tracery has long since
vanished. It stands in a wide meadow, half hidden by giant trees. As we
glided along the highroad we caught glimpses of the wall, rising from a
stretch of velvety lawn, but there was not enough of the ruin to make a
nearer inspection worth while.
From Guisborough our road ran through a level, fertile farming country.
We missed Middlesbrough, a manufacturing city of one hundred thousand,
whose array of factory chimneys loomed up thickly across the fields,
and soon came into Stockton-on-Tees, about half the size of its
neighbor. It lies directly on the river, here a black, turbid stream,
sullied by the factories that crowd its banks. We hesitated entering
the Black Lion--it had an uncanny look that made us distrust even the
infallible Baedeker. No one except the busy barmaids was to be seen. A
few glances about the place confirmed our suspicions and we "silently
stole away."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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