Qualla: Scarborough https://qualla.com/scarborough en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Scarborough https://qualla.com/scarborough Scarborough: Introduction https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit Ian G Shingler, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1626, a Scarborough woman named Mrs Farrer noticed that water trickling from one of the cliffs below the town was staining the rocks reddish-brown with mineral content. She tasted it. It was extremely bitter. She declared it medicinal. Word spread - first locally, then to physicians, then to fashionable London - and Scarborough became, by the late seventeenth century, the first seaside resort in Britain. People came for the spa. Then in the 1730s the doctor Wittie at the spa added sea-bathing to the prescribed treatments, and the second great Scarborough industry was born. The railway arrived in 1845, the grand hotels followed, and the town settled into the shape it still has - the original spa town wrapped around the castle headland, expanding into the new North Bay developments above. The seaside resort the rest of England would imitate started here.

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Image: Ian G Shingler | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Scarborough: Two Bays and a Castle https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit Stephen McKay, CC BY-SA 2.0. The headland is the key to Scarborough. A Norman castle was established on the high cliff in the twelfth century, defending against the Scots and against piracy. The town grew up first along South Bay, sheltered by the headland from the northeasterly gales that lash the coast in ...

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Image: Stephen McKay | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-two-bays-and-a-castle.mp3 0:06 2 full Scarborough: The Strange River https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. Scarborough exists in its strange location partly because of the River Derwent, which does something no other British river does: it rises within sight of the North Sea but flows the wrong way. Carved by Ice Age mud deposits that blocked the natural eastward course, the Derwent n...

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-the-strange-river.mp3 0:06 3 full Scarborough: Anne Bronte's Grave https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit Immanuel Giel, Public domain. Among the unexpected things in Scarborough is Anne Bronte's grave, in the churchyard of St Mary's at the foot of the castle headland. Anne, the youngest Bronte sister, came to Scarborough in May 1849 hoping the sea air would arrest her consumption. She had been here twice before ...

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Image: Immanuel Giel | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-anne-brontes-grave.mp3 0:06 4 full Scarborough: Holbeck Hall Slides Into the Sea https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit JThomas, CC BY-SA 2.0. In June 1993, the Holbeck Hall Hotel - a substantial Victorian seafront establishment on the South Cliff - collapsed into the sea over the course of about forty-eight hours, live on television news. The cause was not erosion in the usual sense; the cliff itself slumped after week...

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Image: JThomas | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-holbeck-hall-slides-into-the-sea.mp3 0:06 5 full Scarborough: The Rotunda and the Father of Geology https://qualla.com/scarborough/ Photo credit Christopher Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0. Just east of the harbour, on Vernon Road, stands a small circular building called the Rotunda, opened in 1829. It was built to house the geological collection of William Smith - the canal engineer who, while surveying coal seams in the 1790s, realised that you could identify and ...

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Image: Christopher Hall | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/x/s/scarborough-wk/gcxs-scarborough-the-rotunda-and-the-father-of-geology.mp3 0:06 6 full