Whitby Heritage Trail - A City Tour Via Art

This is the second post in a series about Whitby, to be posted the second Wednesday of each month.

One of the fun things we did in Whitby was track down the sculptures from the Heritage Trail that are spread out around the entire main part of the town. The sculptures were created by Emma Stothard, a Whitby resident and sculptor. She's known for steel wire and willow sculptures of animals.

There is a big map showing where to find the sculptures, yet we missed one we passed nearby for a couple days. She was so discreetly situated in front of a church to the right of where we were turning left to get to the public area full of shops and restaurants. I think she was closest to the residential area out of all the others.

Gansey Knitter

She's known as the Gansey Knitter, and is located on Flowergate. One can fall down a rabbit hole researching ganseys, but the short version is that these are specialized jumpers/sweaters fishermen wore. They were tightly knitted with shortened sleeves (not short, just short enough to not get caught in the works while sailing). The tight knit kept water out. Different areas had different patters, with the Whitby still being one of the most popular. I've just turned up in my research that ganseys can still be purchased in the various patterns, so I guess that's a future goal!

The next hardest for us to find was Penny Hedge, as this guy was really far from the others, on the other side of the inlet and up the river. He was at the end of a row of pubs, just as some homes started, and just beyond the bulk of the docking areas. This guy comes with a story, or rather a legend.

Penny Hedge

In 1159, a group of hunters were chasing a boar, which ran into a hermitage (note that this has a few meanings, as does the hermit who lives in a hermitage, but it appears in this case to be a monastery with a monk residing there). The hermit living there shut the door to protect the boar from the hounds on his heels, enraging the hunters, who beat him to death. As he was dying, he asked that the abbot punish them by making an annual penance, rather than a death penalty. This penance is still done on Ascension Day each year. At one point, a horn is blown, and then they must call out "Out on ye, out on ye!"

I'm going to circle back now to a sculpture just down the way from the Gansey Knitter. The Net Mender, opposite of the Knitter, is in the middle of the sidewalk amongst a bunch of shops and restaurants. His story's pretty obvious in a fishing town. Nets were widely used for fishing, and that meant a town full of fishermen needed a good net mender to keep them in business.

Net Mender

If one were to keep walking past the Net Mender and down toward the harbor, they'd come to the Fishwife. Fishwives are the less talked about half of the fish team in a harbor. They did all the work at home, including making sure everything was ready to go before the men set out, helping sort the catch when they came back in, and selling the fish along the harbor. They were known for calling out their wares in town.

Fishwife

Walking on past her and the heavy barrel she will have heaved over to her spot, there comes a split in the road. There's a bridge that will lead to two of the other sculptures, one of them the Penny Hedge. But much closer to him, standing against the bridge as he studies the sea, is the Bridgender. This sculpture is actually based on a guy we're going to discuss in a minute: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. In that photo, a fisherman was studying the sea and the sky to decide if he should go out fishing or if the weather was too dangerous. Even now, in a day of modern technology and improved communication, being a fisherman is a dangerous career. Imagine back then how much more dangerous it was. So much so, that the patterns on ganseys were sometimes used to help determine where the body of a fisherman needed to be returned.

Bridgender

From here, it's easiest to go back across the bridge and turn right, walking along those businesses you see beyond the Bridgender. Sticking to the dock side, the trail winds around to a wide area that features a small bandstand (behind the women in the photo below) where the ocean outlet lies between two lighthouses. That's where the trio of the Herring Girls stands.

Herring Girls 1 and 2

Herring Girls were women who traveled by train to work in harbors to gut and salt the fish (the two above), with a third sealing the salted fish into barrels (below). Those same barrels that the Fishwife would roll along the docks to sell fish from. Fishing villages were truly a cohesive community that worked together.

Herring Girl 3

Heading back inward, the next sculpture tells the tale of survival, a reminder of how dangerous the seas could be. On February 9, 1861, a massive storm swept in and wrecked over 200 ships. The lifeboat went out repeatedly to rescue survivors, but on its sixth launch that day, a wave capsized the lifeboat. All of the men on it drowned except for one: Henry Freeman. The reason he survived? He was wearing a new cork lifejacket that saved his life. He was given a medal for his bravery, working on the lifeboat for over forty years.

Henry Freeman

The final three sculptures are reached up those stairs to the right of Henry. Then another, much longer, set. Those steps wind up along the West Cliff, where there's an amazing view of the ocean, along with some other famous statues (and our favorite little seaside stand, Clara's.) Not far from Clara's stands Skipper Dora Walker, a woman with a fascinating story. 

Skipper Dora Walker

Dora Walker was a nurse in WWI, but she was found to be suffering bronchial issues afterward, so a doctor recommended she move to the coast. Finding herself in Whitby, she started going out to sea as a fisherman. Ultimately, she ended up being the first woman with a skipper's license in the North Sea. The sculpture has her with her crab pots, but she was also good with a long line, and could navigate safely through the sea mines. I could do a whole post about her (author, president of the Whitby Women's Lifeboat Guild, Honorary Keeper of the Whiby Museum, etc.), but I've tried to keep it brief and just give an overview here. The short version? She was a hell of a woman.

William Scoresby, Crow's Nest

A bit farther up the cliff is the second to last sculpture: William Scoresby in his Crow's Nest. The reason he's in the nest is simple--he invented it. At least that particular type. The barrel crow's nest represented a huge leap in sailing safety, making it so a sailor could climb up and have an extended view around the ship to watch for hazards, such as icebergs. This was especially important to him, because he was a whaler who also set the record for navigating a boat the farthest north for quite a long time. He also invented other things, such as an ice drill. An interesting man, his son was another fascinating person (scientist, whaler, clergyman, and more.)

Heading away from the ocean, back in the direction of the Gansey Knitter, is another easily spotted sculpture, and the final one on this trail. Near two of our favorite places (Stoker's and Botham's), as well as some neat antique shops, is the sculpture of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe was the son of a painter who used his knowledge of painting to explore photography, going against conventions in photography in the Victorian time to photograph the real life of a harbor town. At the time, everyone else was staging lovely photos of the Victorian era, but he photographed fishermen, fishwives, chimney sweeps, and other people who were going about their lives. If you look him up, you can see samples of his amazing work, which really puts faces to the type of people we see in the rest of the sculptures. I am in awe of his photos, including those of ships in the harbor that are so stark and in the moment that it makes you feel that time.

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe

The thing about the Heritage Trail is that it takes you on a walk to explore the rest of the city away from the 199 steps and Whitby Abbey. The closest sculpture to the abbey is the Bridgender, but none of them are terribly near it. From the Bridgender, one must wind their way through restaurants, bookstores, candy shops, and stores selling the famous Whitby jet before reaching the bottom of the 199 steps. But if you follow the trail to visit the sculptures, you'll find the best restaurants, the West Cliff and lighthouses, antique shops and bakeries, and so much more. It's a full circle around the main parts of the town that reminds visitors that there's much, much more to the town than the abbey (as wonderful as it is), and that some fascinating people came from or ended up in Whitby.

Map of the Heritage Trail

I think next time I'll take us the rest of the way to the 199 steps. Whether that gets us up to St. Mary's or Whitby Abbey is yet to be seen.