Qualla: Filey Brigg

Filey Brigg: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The story the Filey fishermen tell goes like this: the Devil was building a bridge across the North Sea when he dropped his hammer into the water. He reached down to grab it, but instead caught a fish. He exclaimed, in surprise and disgust, 'Hah! Dick!' - and that, according to local folklore, is how the haddock got its name. The marks of his grasping fingers can still be seen, the story claims, in the long ridge of rock that juts a mile out into the sea north of Filey: the Brigg. It is, by any folkloric standard, a particularly Yorkshire explanation - practical, irreverent, and only slightly committed to making sense.

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Filey Brigg: A Finger of Stone

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Bond, CC BY-SA 2.0. Filey Brigg is a long narrow peninsula about a mile north of the town of Filey, on the East Riding coast. The landward end, called Carr Naze, rises in twenty-metre cliffs of mixed sandstone and limestone. From there, the rock thins into the Brigg proper: a low, level ridge runnin...

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Image: Peter Bond | CC BY-SA 2.0

Filey Brigg: The Roman Signal Station

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew Hartley, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1857 a Filey antiquarian named Dr Cortis - one of those Victorian doctor-amateurs who made half the archaeological discoveries of their century - began excavating the headland at Carr Naze. A local painter named Wilson had been finding Roman pottery, bone fragments, and charre...

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Image: Matthew Hartley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Filey Brigg: Erosion in Progress

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John S Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Brigg continues to come apart. In 1869 a major landslip carried several hundred metres of Carr Naze into the sea, taking part of the Roman site with it. Smaller slips happen regularly: the soft clay cliffs face the prevailing weather and slump after rain, and the wave action ...

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Image: John S Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Filey Brigg: The Dragon and the Parkin

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorcas Sinclair, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Devil and his haddock are not the only legend attached to the Brigg. Another local story holds that the rocks are the bones of a dragon that once terrorised the area. The townspeople, the story runs, knew that the beast loved Yorkshire parkin - a sticky, gingery cake made wit...

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Image: Dorcas Sinclair | CC BY-SA 2.0