Britain’s Coastal Secrets： How Whitby Abbey Inspired Dracula ｜ Our History)

Today I'm in the north east of England going back to my roots. Now I am a little bit biased but for me nothing beats the glorious beaches of Northumberland and Yorkshire. Just the words Whitby and Scarborough conjure up images of day trips to the beach where parents relax and us kids can have as much fun as we like all fueled by sugar I'll uncover the story of Britain's first seaside resort. If it was good enough for those aristos in the 18th century then here we are. Come on. Delve into the dark world of smuggling. This was incredibly brutal. There were murders, there were maimings. Witness how invaders have shaped this coast. The vikings attacked, killed a lot of the monks, took others away as slaves. There he is, Leonard Ellis, killed at Clare and Hunt's shop. And how others have brought salvation. They were coming to Scarborough for the cure. To think that this magnificent structure was used for the common good. Welcome to the beautiful beaches of Yorkshire and Northumberland. My journey begins in Whitby, a Yorkshire harbour town that's witnessed everything from fishing to shipbuilding to whaling. With a dramatic abbey on the clifftop that's dominated the town for more than a thousand years. These days the main focus here is tourism. And Whitby beach was one of my most loved childhood haunts. This is what you call perfect Whitby weather in my eyes. It's one of my favourite places on earth because I visited it so much with my family when I was a kid. We'd do the exact same thing every time. Park the car up at the top by the abbey, walk down the stone steps and make a beeline for the beach. It's the same journey but in reverse. Taken by a very famous fictional character in a Victorian novel. Someone you may have heard of, Dracula. The famous gothic horror Dracula is partly set in Whitby. It was written by a Dublin-born theatre manager, Bram Stoker, who made several visits to the town in the 1890s when it was a fashionable destination for artists and writers. When I visited Whitby as a child, I knew the beach was tied up with the Dracula story. What I didn't know was just how grounded the novel is in real history. Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. Crucially, the action starts on this beach when Dracula's ship comes into the harbour. But what isn't well known is that Stoker based that scene on a real-life event. Scholar Catherine Wynne is based at Hull University just down the coast and has been studying Dracula for more than 25 years. So Catherine, tell me about the Dimitri. The ship that was wrecked in this harbour, what happened? Well in late October 1885, there was a tremendous storm on this coastline and one ship was wrecked and then the Dimitri seemed to be able to be okay. It landed here in Whitby and then it was wrecked just shortly afterwards. So we've got a photograph of it here. It's an incredible photograph. It is an incredible photograph. Because you can see the headland just there and obviously there's been a bit of coastal erosion. That is really dramatic. And so how was Bram Stoker inspired by this? Well what happens in the book is there's a storm at sea. They're terrified that this ship, they can see it's in difficulty out in the sea and so they mobilise the coast guards and the lifeboats are mobilised. But it lands safely. The interesting thing about it when it lands is there's nobody on board except the dead captain. He has not left. This is his ship and he's holding a crucifix in his hand. And there's nothing alive on the ship except a dog. This massive black dog jumps off the ship and makes its way up the steps here and disappears into the town of Whitby. And of course the dog is Dracula because what they don't know is that Dracula can transform from bat to dog to mist and that's how he lands. A small harbour town on England's east coast may seem like a bizarre destination for a Transylvanian vampire in an 1890s gothic novel. But when you look at the location, the haunting ruins, the windswept graveyard, you can see why it was a brilliant choice on Stoker's part. What brought Bram Stoker here? What was it that got him thinking about the story? Well Bram Stoker was a man of the theatre. What better setting than Whitby? What you've got are the two cliffs. You've got St Mary's churchyard and you've got the abbey. This is a theatre and this is the theatre where he lands his villain. This is where Dracula arrives to terrorise Britain. And if you're coming in by sea, this is the stage right here. This is the stage. It's magnificent isn't it? It is. And of course the atmospheric effects of tempest and storm and fog that you get, that are built up in the novel and that create this backdrop. The backdrop is magnificent here. So this graveyard is also the setting for the two key female characters in the novel. Mina and Lucy. Well what happens to Mina is unfortunately her friend Lucy sleepwalks and one night Mina wakes up and Lucy has escaped from her bed. So Mina looks across here to this graveyard and can see her friend Lucy sitting at one o'clock in the morning only in her white nightdress on their favourite seat as they used to sit here in the daytime and look out to sea. And she rushes down, runs up these 199 steps and all she can see, she can see something hovering over Lucy. She doesn't quite know what it is. She describes it as neither man nor beast. So when she gets as far as Lucy this figure has disappeared but all she finds are two pinpricks in Lucy's neck and of course it's the bite of the vampire. So it's right here and we are here. This is where we can visualise it across these rooftops with the waves crashing in. It's so atmospheric. It is. Could you read something? I can indeed. Mina comes to Whitby to be with her friend and this is how she describes Whitby. She says right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey. It is the most noble ruin of immense size and full of beautiful and romantic bits. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby. So the spot we're in now for it lies right over the town and it is a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettle Ness stretches out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen away and some of the graves have been destroyed. I shall come and sit here. Very often myself and work. And that's Bram Stoker, isn't it? Sitting here and working. Yes. His visits to Whitby inspired Bram Stoker to create one of our greatest fictional characters. Stoker was part of a tourist craze that gripped the Yorkshire coast back then and still does now. It all began just down the coast on a beach that tells the incredible story of what many call Britain's first ever seaside resort. I'm on South Bay Beach in Scarborough. The town is the largest seaside resort on the Yorkshire coast. Every year about 10 million people flock to its beaches. Tourists come to enjoy all the fun of the seaside but before the 1600s people didn't come to the beach for pleasure at all. The British seaside resort all began with a discovery on this beach. The whole idea of a seaside resort started here in Scarborough. As far back as 1626 Mrs Farrer discovered natural spa waters with healing properties bubbling out of the cliffs and soon hundreds and then thousands of Brits descended on Scarborough to take the waters. I'm meeting museum director Andrew Clay to find out how Mrs Farrer's discovery turned Scarborough into Britain's first ever beach resort. I have a soft spot in my heart for Scarborough Andrew. I used to come here quite a lot from Bradford but the backdrop is these fabulous grand buildings I don't know much about. So when did all of that happen? Well you can read the history of Scarborough in the architecture. The sort of Scarborough holiday resort if you like started at the end of the 17th century so in the late 1600s would you believe when Mrs Farrer discovered the spa waters. So this was sulphuric water coming out of the cliff probably absolutely disgusting but it was seen as a cure and that attracted the gentry and aristocracy moving into the early 18th century. Horace Walpole the famous politician said London is empty everybody's in Scarborough. What he meant was that society had moved to Scarborough the gentry the aristocracy they probably all over indulged in the assembly rooms in York and London probably got a bit of gout and they were coming to Scarborough for the cure to drink the waters in the belief that that would relieve them of their ailments. Over the decades the popularity of the town grew and other seaside attractions developed. In 1858 the Scarborough spa building was expanded it was a place to take the waters but it also housed an assembly hall that could seat 2,000 people an open-air bandstand and a colonnade of shops. Let's come to Scarborough in the 1800s who would I meet what experience would I have? It was the beginning I think of Scarborough's heyday and that ran right through from the early 19th century really up to the post-war period in the 20th century. So it was a long time when Scarborough became established as a sort of premier resort in the north of England and the spa is where it all happened that's where all the shows were the entertainment Prince of Wales would be there other regional aristocrats would come to Scarborough you can just imagine that belle époque era the 1880s terribly glamorous beautiful fashions and that all happened here in Scarborough. Today the spa water is no longer considered safe for human consumption but it wasn't just spa water that attracted early visitors to the town seawater was also seen as a cure. Scarborough local Marie Woods is keen to introduce me to the history of sea swimming. Marie this is the life. It's lovely isn't it? What a spot. I'm meeting her in a beach chalet but in the past Scarborough's sea swimmers had an even more convenient way to enter the water. The beach here was scattered with bathing machines they looked a bit like wagons but were a novel way to get into the sea. So what was a bathing machine? So they're essentially these wooden huts on wheels two sets of stairs on either side with two doors one will go in she would get changed and then be taken down the beach into the water until the stairs could be lowered and then she would get out where it was safe enough and go and swim and then she would get back in. How dignified so what in your own little hut like this beach hut on wheels down we go. Yeah and then lower the staircase and nobody can see. Totally modest. That's fantastic we need to bring back that kind of swimming. From the 1700s right up until the 20th century seabathing was mainly seen as a medicinal cure rather than a pleasure. In 1752 a Dr Richard Russell published a dissertation on the use of seawater in the diseases of the glands. He borrowed an ancient Greek motto the sea washes away all the evils of mankind. Was there specific advice about how long you should spend in the water or what you should do? Yeah a couple of pamphlets said you know like two minutes swimming five minutes for men but it varied from the time of year. Also talking about taking the waters between May and September. Yeah well it's not September. No. We're the other side. No but that's because we're hardcore we'll be fine. Yeah. We'll be fine. I do have a friend who goes sea swimming because it's on the rise around the country and she said to me walk in there and say to yourself I am a goddess. I am a goddess. Yeah. I am a goddess. This is the med. It's good. Yeah we'll be fine. We'll be fine. No turning back Marie. No I'm gonna do it. If it was good enough in the 1600s. If it was good enough for those aristos in the 18th century then here we are. I am a goddess. Today the water temperature is a chilly 13 degrees or so. It's literally decades since I even dipped my toes in the Scarborough Sea. I have swum in the sea in Scarborough in autumn and I've never felt so exhilarated in my life. I feel enhanced. I feel like I've got superpowers and no one can tell me I've gone soft. I'm a proper Yorkshire woman. Yeah I think Mrs Farrow was onto something wasn't she? Scarborough's famous waters may have been what first lured visitors here but over the centuries more and more tourists came to enjoy all the fun of the seaside resort. It's hard to imagine today but people having fun on the beach produced a moral panic in the Victorian age. The usual rules seemed to be slipping as men and women mixed freely. A town like this needed an antidote to the pleasures of the beach. I'm on the spa bridge that connects the old fishing town to the more affluent south cliff with its grand houses and hotels. And in the 19th century the fashionable set came here to live and to holiday but there was a problem. To go to church on a Sunday they'd have to cross the bridge to St Mary's near the castle. So what did they do? Build a new church of course. It's called St Martin's on the Hill perched right above the beach on South Cliff. Built in 1863 the church reveals just how rich and fashionable Scarborough was becoming and that Bram Stoker wasn't the only top artist of the day to be drawn to Yorkshire's beaches. Art historian Suzanne Fagence Cooper tells me more. Wow Suzanne. I was not expecting this at all. Isn't it just the most beautiful inside of a church? It's so unexpected. It's so opulent and warm and colourful. What's special about this church is that the beautiful paintings and stained glass were amongst the earliest works of William Morris & Co, a company made up of the hottest new artists of the day, the pre-Raphaelites. Designers like William Morris, founder of the arts and crafts movement, and painters like his friend Edward Burne-Jones. At the heart of the project was a gifted local, Yorkshireman George Bodley. The architect was Bodley who was quite young just setting out. He was from Hull so he's a local person and he was starting to work with another group of young men who were friends of William Morris. So William Morris gathered his friends like Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Ford Maddox Brown and they made a company called Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company. And this was one of their very first projects. It was a chance for them to sell their words in a way. You know, they were out there advertising. Bodley said, I think your style will fit with my style. They'd known each other even as quite young men, so perfect opportunity. But they hadn't yet made a big name for themselves. 1861 was when they were starting to send out their flyers. 1862 was when they were exhibiting for the first time in South Kensington and this is right on the back of that. So it's an amazing opportunity to sort of go, boom, we've arrived. Incredible to think that this new arts and crafts company of young gifted artists went straight from showing off their wares in South Kensington to a Yorkshire beach resort nearly 250 miles from London. A bit like getting Damien Hurston to decorate the village hall. It's really unexpected to find a place like this in Scarborough today, isn't it? It is, but in the mid-19th century, people were travelling here from all over Britain and this would be a real attraction. This incredible church, a who's who of the creative stars of late Victorian Britain, testifies to the confidence and status of what was fast becoming Britain's premier beach resort. But dark days beckoned and on a foggy day in 1914, Scarborough's beaches would become targets of war. I'm on Scarborough's beautiful South Bay beach, for centuries a place of fun and pleasure. But in 1914, it became a place of terror and death. The Great War began in August that year. By December, there was already deadlock, with British and German troops dug in on the Western Front in France and Belgium. Then out of the blue, the Germans did something shocking and unprecedented. They unleashed total war on England's east coast. Back in the North Sea, steaming out of helicoland bite, the German high seas fleet is hunting, scouting in full strength. It's December the 16th, 1914, a typically cold, foggy morning. As the sea mist lifts, two German battleships appear just off this beach. With hardly a moment to even acknowledge what they are, they open fire. It was here that the First World War, the war that many believed would be over by Christmas, became a deadly reality for British civilians. For about 20 minutes, over 500 high explosive shells fell on Scarborough. The castle was the first place to be hit. But the shelling was indiscriminate, with houses, shops, churches and schools all damaged. It's estimated that 18 people were killed and over 80 injured. The victims were everyday Scarborough citizens, among them a postman, a boy scout, a maid. Historian Michael Reeve has researched the impact of the bombardment. This is an unexpected attack on civilians and it caught everyone unawares. In the same way, I don't know, what I keep thinking about is 7-7 or 9-11. The impact something like that has. And it does make you very protective of your place. There was that real shock value. Ordinary people in the town didn't think that the Royal Navy could be beat. I mean, the idea of British home defence was that the sea was our border, our protection. Initially, people were very surprised that the Royal Navy could let this happen, but the focus quickly shifts on to Germany as a nation that clearly could commit atrocities. That was the way it was painted. So what was the message that was sent out? Well, there was this concerted campaign to remember Scarborough. This is what was on the posters. The really famous poster of Britannia placed in Scarborough, leading the charge. What does it actually do to the nation? Why did they want to kind of increase that feeling? Well, of course, Britain is reliant on volunteers to fight this war, particularly before conscriptions brought in in 1916. So you need a way of recruiting more men for the forces. You need a way of recruiting civilians to volunteer at home, you know. So events like the Scarborough bombardment play the role. People were horrified that British civilians could be killed while going about their daily lives, eating breakfast, going to work, popping to the shops. Linda Ellis is a direct descendant of the first civilian to be killed in the Scarborough raid. His name was Leonard Ellis. So, Linda, what happened on the morning of December the 16th, 1914? Leonard Ellis is my grandfather's cousin. He was working at Claren Hunt's shop, which is this shop here. He was a chemist. He would be opening the shop at eight o'clock, and the reports are that he went out into the street to witness the shells. And as the shells were falling, unfortunately, he was hit by a shell outside the shop door. There he is, Leonard Ellis. A well-known Salvationist killed at Claren Hunt's shop. Leonard was a member of the Salvation Army, a Christian charity devoted to helping the poor and needy. He was in the Salvation Army for 34 years. He played the drum, and at his funeral, the drum was silent and it was covered in flowers as a commemoration. It was quite a spectacular funeral. This is their record of what happened, actually, on that day. There were 500 shells upon us, firing for half an hour, killing 21 and wounding 55 others. One of the killed was our drummer, Brother Leonard Ellis, a soldier of the Scarborough Corps. The funeral on the Saturday was attended by thousands all along the route. We laid interest with full Salvation Army honours. He was always at his post. And there's a plaque that's been put up. Yeah, this is a really great thing for us because it recognises that Leonard was the first civilian to be killed on British soil in the First World War. The Scarborough bombardment wasn't the first time the beaches of the North East had come under attack. For anyone approaching Britain from Northern Europe, these East Coast beaches are the first landfall. Just over a thousand years earlier, and about 140 miles up the coast at the monastery in Lindisfarne, a new terror came to Britain. In 793 AD, it was on this very beach that the Viking Age is said to have begun, with a vicious raid on the wealthiest and most important monastery in Britain. Norwegian archaeologist Kat Jarman tells me more. On the 8th of June, 793, the pagans attacked from the sea. And this was this devastating attack where the pagans or the vikings killed a lot of the monks, took others away as slaves, took all the riches away. And this really sent sort of shockwaves, not just across Northumbria, but also to other parts of Europe. And so this is where we get the idea of these vikings arriving to maraud, to rape, to pillage. Yeah, these are quite contemporary records, so it's likely that that is true. There was horror at the time. One account stating, the church is spattered with the blood of the priests. The raid has traditionally been seen as the start of many centuries of viking attacks on England. But new thinking, Kat tells me, suggests that this wasn't the first contact between the vikings and the English. So a scholar called Alcuin of York wrote a message of support and sympathy to Lindisfarne. He also says that this really is divine retribution. And the Northumbrians brought this on themselves. It wasn't just a sort of random attack. He actually admonishes the Northumbrians, both he says the people and the princes, for interacting with pagans. So he says that they've been copying their clothes, they've been copying their hairstyles, the trimmings of their beards, which is really intriguing because this is also meant to be the first time that they even appear, but actually they've already been copying their fashions. So the vikings should have been here longer then, they could have been here before. There's certainly evidence that there's contact. So the key part there is to remember that we are right by the sea here. And that really was the main transport route. People aren't really traveling so much over land. We go on the motorways to get here, but really it's the sea that's the motorway at the time. I mean, it's all about the beaches, isn't it? The fact that we are on this island with these open beaches and that description of this being the motorway, people coming, having access, and different cultures then coming and kind of making up the fabric of Britain. Yeah, I think that really is the key to think that this is the way in. Experts like Kat are also questioning the traditional view that it was only viking men who were traveling to England. We now know there's a lot of evidence that women really were part of the whole movement out of Scandinavia. Whether they were part of those early raids, we don't know. But certainly when we come to the settlement phase, women were a key part of that as well. So by the ninth century, we are starting to see a lot of evidence from women moving. We get that from things like the skeletal remains, but we also see it in things like objects, artifacts, female dress jewelry, Scandinavian dress jewelry, actually in really large numbers. That's so fascinating to think about. So you've got Scandinavian families living side by side with Anglo-Saxon families. Yeah, absolutely. Scandinavians really become sort of absorbed, I think, into the fabric of what then becomes England quite quickly, and especially up here in the northeast. And language, so much of the English language is taken from Scandinavian. So those settlers just become a huge part of that story. The Viking invaders who landed here at Lindisfarne went on to have a huge impact on this coast and on England itself for three centuries to come. A few miles to the south, the beach at Bambera tells a very different story of salvation. This epic mile and a half of sand with its magical castle is home to a remarkable tale of maritime rescuers and pioneers in early medicine. This has got to be one of my favorite beaches in Britain. Just look at it, the spectacular backdrop of Bambera Castle, this epic sky and the light that gives this place a magical quality. But don't be fooled by the seemingly fairytale setting, because it can be perilous. There's been a castle on this beach since the 7th century, but in the 1700s, it became a center of sanctuary for the victims of shipwrecks. In 1721, the owner of Bambera, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, died without an heir. In his will, he stated the castle be used for charitable purposes, overseen by a group of trustees. Local historian and guide, Carol Griffith, has studied the letters of Dr. John Sharp, who was a trustee here in the 1750s. They give an amazing insight into life on Bambera Beach at that time. Dr. Sharp's letters are littered with reference to the bodies on the beach. The sea today looks fabulous, but the storms that we get so often in this area meant there were loads of wrecks here, and it was almost a daily occurrence to find bodies washed up on the beach. But there was one incident that made him focus particularly on trying to help people affected by shipwrecks. On the 28th of February, 1765, a particularly severe storm hit the beach, which changed the course of the castle's history. People somehow managed to make it to the beach. Goodness me. But they expired because there was nowhere to actually care for them. And Dr. Sharp determined that the castle would offer shelter. Not only shelter, though, they offered free coffins to those who were deceased. If bodies were found on the beach, they would take a peen sheet from the barracks here and use it as a shroud. To give them some dignity. Give some dignity and Christian burial. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because normally castles and these grand buildings are for the elite, and the common man or woman were never allowed anywhere near it. But to think that this magnificent structure was used for the common good. Thank goodness for Dr. Sharp and the trust. Oh, absolutely. Bambra Castle was home to other pioneering life-saving efforts. Dr. Sharp installed cannons to warn passing ships when it was foggy, built accommodation for shipwrecked sailors, and Britain's first ever lifeboat operated from here, 38 years before the RNLI even existed. And there's one document that Carol has found which shows just how far Dr. Sharp was prepared to go to try and save drowned sailors. To modern ears, it sounds a bit far-fetched. The instructions spelt out very clearly that the poor person would be put in front of a fire and gentle rubbing would be applied. Two villagers could lie side by side with this poor person and also literally try and pass on their body warmth. Well, that makes sense. They also suggested tickling the nose with a feather, but it gets a bit more graphic. The instructions suggested that the stem of a clay pipe could be inserted in what the document calls a fundament, which you and I might politely refer to as an orifice. But they were very mindful that the smoke that they're trying to get into the body, that the stem of the pipe might break. And so the suggestion was that before that, they would smear it with butter to sort of try and insert that into the fundament to revive them. So let me get this straight. You've got two strangers rubbing up against you for body heat, a pipe shoved up you to blow, and someone tickling under your nose. Yes, and rubbing your belly at the same time. Did it work? It apparently did work. I don't think we're supposed to be testing it out. No, not today, not today. In the 1700s, it was clearly risky making a living from the sea with the perils of shipwreck and drowning ever present. But the sea could bring great riches too. Back down in Yorkshire, there's a remarkable beach where fortunes were made from a secret and very illicit trade. On my journey across the amazing beaches of the Northeast, I've witnessed everything from threatening invasions to the birth of the Seaside Resort. Now I'm back in Yorkshire on the beach in the picturesque village of Robin Hood's Bay. And this beach has a secret history. Glorious Robin Hood's Bay. I want to draw your attention to this innocent-looking brook flowing into the sea. If you follow the stream up through that tunnel, you'll find that there used to be trap doors leading into some of the houses. And that's because it was used for smuggling, taking contraband from this beach into the village. In the late 1700s, smuggling was big business, and nowhere more so than here. Maritime historian Rob Robinson has researched what lay behind the boom in this illegal trade. The reason you went smuggling was because there were high tariffs on many commodities. The government didn't charge income tax in the 18th century, and so they looked for other sources of revenue, particularly when they fought the many wars with France. And one means of making revenue was to charge customs and excise duties on all range of goods. And once you do that, there's a life for a profit. And that's what got these people involved. So what was coming into the country in the 18th century that everyone wanted their hands on? Alcohol. People wanted alcohol. So there were duties on brandy. There were duties on rum, even, and on gin. The other big commodity that was shipped in in the 18th century was tea. People used smuggled tea because it was so much cheaper. And this used to drive the government to disperse. In 1784, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger claimed that of the £13 million in weight of tea consumed in Britain per year, less than half had been brought into the country legally. Can you tell me exactly how it might have worked? How would they have got the contraband in? And how would they have run it up through the village and get it out? How it typically worked on this coast was in many ways. You quite often had luggers that came along this coast. A lugger is a very fast sailing vessel, right? And it comes along the coast and it's full of contraband. And they would make arrangements with people from Robin Hood's Bay and other places like that. And they would meet them off the coast. And they'd be able to meet them because this is a fishing village? This is a fishing village. So you'd make a little drop-off somewhere? Yeah. And then, of course, you ran the goods inland because it's a very remote area. There are lots of pony trackways leading across the moors and you could ship the goods out. But literally, everybody in the village was involved in something like that. From the very lowest to the top. Some people made very decent money off it. Other people just got a little bit for turning a blind eye. And nobody, of course, in such a tight-knit community would tell on anybody else because the penalties for doing that were so very, very difficult. So this entire place, which is like this picture postcard holiday destination now, they were all smugglers? Yeah. And there was nothing ideological about it. They weren't great believers in free trade. If anything, they wanted the duties to remain. Because while the duties were there, there was an incentive to smuggle because you brought things in cheaper. But it's completely illegal, isn't it, the activity? Well, yeah. But just think. If you say to somebody, have you ever smuggled anything? People will say, well, I smuggled the odd bottle of, you know, wine or something in my suitcase. So we are, even to this day, very ambivalent about certain types of smuggling. It's something in the British psyche that accepts that. And so for people here, they didn't see that as wrongdoing. It's all very romantic now, thinking about smugglers and pirates and rum being taken up through Robin Hood's Bay. But it couldn't have been that straightforward. It must have been a pretty dangerous place to exist. Yeah. This sounds romantic today, but it was incredibly brutal. There were murders. There were maimings. There was a lot of pressure put on people who were sent in to enforce the rules of the government. Quite often, there would be a degree of thuggery, a degree of enforcement. Even the architecture of Robin Hood's Bay lends itself to the smuggling trade. It was claimed that contraband could be passed from house to house without seeing the light of day. This is what you call a tight-knit community. You definitely know everybody's business. You can also see how things would be smuggled from one property to the other if they needed to be in this community of criminals. Or were they just resourceful, free-trading people? While today, Robin Hood's Bay residents are more likely to make their money from tourism than smuggling, there are still locals here whose families were involved in the village's smuggling past. Amongst them is 94-year-old Dennis Crosby. Dennis first became interested in his family's history listening to the stories of his grandmother, Rachel Ann Collinson. So Dennis, what's the family connection to smuggling and what do you remember about Rachel? Oh, she was a matriarch. In those days, most of the ladies in Robin Hood's Bay were matriarchs, I think. They used to sort of run everything. I think they had to because the ones whose husbands were at sea, they only saw them about once a year and therefore all the rest of the time they had to look after the finances, bring their children up, do everything. They did run the village, really. And did Rachel tell you anything about smuggling? Not very much, no, because in Victorian times, they didn't like to talk about it. They didn't like people to think that they'd made their money with smuggling. They were much more sort of genteel by then. She didn't say that they were involved in it. It was the neighbours, it wasn't us. That's right, yeah. What was a strange thing was that we always had silver spoons and they were all George III silver spoons and we had wine glasses that had been made in London and so therefore you could tell that at one time there must have been quite a wealthy family. And what was your family connection? What did they do? Well, the Crosby's were actually involved in the smuggling. One of my ancestors was called Stephen Crosby the Butcher. And he was the wealthiest man in the village. His meat cost him threepence of pounds and he sold it for sixpence. Doubled his money. So he made quite a nice profit on it. But then what else was he up to on the side? We don't know exactly what he did but we think that he was possibly a paymaster. So he had the money to put up? Yeah. To pay for, I guess, what, shipments, confinements, contraband going in? And just how many people were involved? Everyone in the village. Every family. You weren't allowed to live here unless you were involved but they were frightened of people passing on information. So everybody would have known Stephen Crosby the Butcher? He was the kingpin. Every one of his children and grandchildren, he bought them a house in Robin's Bay. So they all did very nicely out of it. So what happened to your family, Dennis? I want to know why we're not sitting in your mansion looking at family heirlooms that were once smuggled in the 18th century. No, I'm afraid it all disappeared. By the early 1800s, smuggling in Robin Hood's Bay was dying out. Import taxes were reduced. Smuggling families moved their money into legitimate businesses. And one business that grew fast on Britain's beaches from as early as the 1870s was fish and chips. Once upon a time, it was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Now it's fish and chips. Nowhere faster than here in Yorkshire where one of the world's first ever chains of fish and chip shops opened in 1928. By 1930, the UK had a staggering 35,000 chippies. Fish and chips were cheap, convenient and nutritious. The perfect meal for day trippers to the beach who didn't have the space to pack a picnic or money to dine out. The huge expansion of North Sea fishing from beaches and harbours like Whitby boosted the fish and chip trade across the UK. And I've come back to Whitby to complete my journey in traditional Rani family fashion. For me, no visit to Whitby is complete without a trip to the chippy. Stuart Fusco's family have been selling fish and chips in Whitby since 1968. Hello, Stuart. Hello. How are you? Okay, thank you, you? I'm very well. Have I arrived in the best chippy in Whitby? Oh, definitely. Definitely so. What do fish and chips mean to Whitby? Oh, it is the day out. It's part of coming to the coast. It's a nostalgic thing. You don't just say, let's go to Whitby for the day. It's let's go to Whitby for some fish and chips. So true. We would come religiously as a family. And like you say, we wouldn't leave without fish and chips. And we'd bring all our guests. Like anybody visiting would come here and have fish and chips. Could I get fish and chips for one, please? No problem. Thank you. Whitby feels like the perfect place to end my remarkable journey along the beaches of Northumberland and my beloved Yorkshire. Along the way, I've discovered how invaders and saviors have shaped this coast and its people. From the first Viking raids and the victims of 1914 to saving lives on the beach or inspiring a literary classic. Above all, I've witnessed how the pleasures of the seaside were first created right here centuries ago, giving huge joy to beach-loving Brits, me among them. This is what it's all about. Nothing says Britain by beach more than eating fish and chips overlooking the sea. To me, Whitby is one of the best places on earth. I've got so many happy childhood memories. Those trips were always about having one foot in the present and one foot very much in the past because it's the sense of history, the stories and the drama all around that bring this place to life.