Above a steep and narrow hollow, running straight down to the sea, and
densely wooded on both sides, stands the church. It has a very sturdy
tower rising from its centre, and, with its simple battlemented outline
and slit windows, has a semi-fortified appearance. The high
pitched-roofs of Early English times have been flattened without
cutting away the projecting drip-stones on the tower, which remain a
conspicuous feature. The interior is quite impressive. Round columns
alternated with octagonal ones support pointed arches, and a clerestory
above pierced with roundheaded slits, indicating very decisively that
the nave was built in the Transitional Norman period. It appears that a
western tower was projected, but never carried out, and an unusual
feature is the descent by two steps into the chancel.
A beautiful view from the churchyard includes the whole sweep of the
bay, cut off sharply by the Brig on the left hand, and ending about
eight miles away in the lofty range of white cliffs extending from
Speeton to Flamborough Head.
The headland itself is lower by more than a 100 feet than the cliffs in
the neighbourhood of Bempton and Speeton, which for a distance of over
two miles exceed 300 feet. A road from Bempton village stops short a
few fields from the margin of the cliffs, and a path keeps close to the
precipitous wall of gleaming white chalk.
We come over the dry, sweet-smelling grass to the cliff edge on a fresh
morning, with a deep blue sky overhead and a sea below of ultramarine
broken up with an infinitude of surfaces reflecting scraps of the
cliffs and the few white clouds. Falling on our knees, we look straight
downwards into a cove full of blue shade; but so bright is the
surrounding light that every detail is microscopically clear. The
crumpling and distortion of the successive layers of chalk can be seen
with such ease that we might be looking at a geological textbook. On
the ledges, too, can be seen rows of little whitebreasted puffins;
razor-bills are perched here and there, as well as countless
guillemots. The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs,
and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically
noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no
nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge. If it is taken away by
those who plunder the cliffs at the risk of their lives, the bird lays
another egg, and if that disappears, perhaps even a third.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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