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Exploring Filey's Past - Supported by Filey Town Council  In 1911 the directory said;Directory of Filey. FILEY like Scarborough, possesses an old and a new town. Originally consisting of a cluster of fishermen's cottages and a high street of more pretentious residences and places of business, it has developed during the course of years, and especially during the latter ones, into a town of most elegant appearance, with crescents and rows of mansion-like houses facing the sea, with streets of well appointed shops and broad avenues, bordered at intervals with excellently designed villas, substantially built. Untrammelled by anything garish, free from bustle, and as yet preserved from inclusion in the list of "excursion" towns, Filey is distinctly the most aristocratic seaside resort in the North. THE BAY. Situate almost midway between Scarborough and Bridlington, on the very edge of the coast, it possesses a bay which for boating and fishing, for breadth of view and beauty of outline, is unrivalled. The horns of the bay consist of Filey Brigg, on the north, and Flamborough Head, on the south. The latter headland is world-famed. With Speeton, still nearer to Filey, its chalk cliffs, dazzling white, rise a sheer four hundred feet from the rocky shore to the grass clad top, on winch, half a mile inland, stands the lighthouse. These cliffs are of singular grandeur and beauty presenting, ever varying aspects in the changing light and atmosphere. They are the abode of countless sea-birds, which lay and hatch their eggs on the narrow ledges, and in the crevices of they dizzy heights. THE BRIGG. The Brigg is one of the most remarkable reefs charted between Dover and Dundee. Flat-topped, and running out practically straight from Carr Naze, it pierces, sword-fish like, the bosom of the sea for fully a mile, forming a perfect breakwater for the bay, but dealing certain destruction to any ship that in the darkness, mist, or storm, might chance to catch upon it. A bell-buoy, working in the tide-race, ceaselessly clangs its note of warning to the unwary mariner. Under the shelter of the Brigg a navy could ride at anchor in absolute safety, whilst without, great seas were hurling themselves against the rocks as though they would tear them from their foundations. The bay is deep, with good holding ground, and it is worthy of significance, in view of the row dispositions of the Naval force in home waters, that the late Sir John Goode, reporting on possible sites for a National Harbour on the East Coast of England, strongly advocated Filey Bay, and said that Filey Brigg, as the foundation of a breakwater for this purpose, would be worth half a million of money for some Government some day. Certainly the bay offers one of the best shelters for storm-stressed craft between the Humber and the Tyne. That its value as a haven was recognised in days long gone by, is shown by a jetty, built of huge square stones and concrete, running out at right angles to the Brigg. Known locally as "The Spittals," this undoubted jetty, now thickly covered with seaweed, and bared only at the ebb of the highest spring tides, has, at low water, soundings of 17 feet on its shoreward side, which is as plumb as the wall of a house. That it is of Roman construction is evident, for oak piles, driven into holes cut into the solid rock of the Brigg, at this point have been discovered, and on one of them being forced out a Roman coin was found at its base. Countless seas have surged over "The Spittals" since those who built the jetty left it desolate, but it stands to-day a rebuke to many a modern sea-wall builder. The Brigg is easily accessible at low water for 600 feet or more, its broad flat surface giving Filey, so long as the tide is low, a natural pier, lapped on either side by a deep water, the like of which does not exist in the British Isles. This long block of rock is rich in specimens of fossil seaweed, and in the pools there is a vast variety of living forms. At low water a path may be picked for some distance round the northern base of Carr Naze, where two magnificent pools, the larger one known as the Emperor's Bath, have been worn out of the solid rock by the scouring of countless seas and the grinding of many boulders. Magnificent seascapes are obtainable from the Brigg and Carr Naze. The towering chalk cliffs of Speeton, and the bold jutting point of Flamborough Head, are plainly visible in detail across the silvery waters of the bay. Their seeming distance varies considerably, but that adds to the charm of strolling out, for some new aspect, some fresh colouring or shade effect, is constantly presented. Northwards, the black, storm-washed, and cave-eaten rocky coast, which stretches to Scarborough, is in open view, Scarborough itself being seen, nestling under the shelter of its Castle Hill, as the eye travels still further north to the rising cliff of Hayburn Wyke. It was off Filey Brigg that Paul Jones, the great American Admiral, fought an action with two of the King's ships in 1779. The fight was witnessed from the cliff tops by the in- habitants, and Mr. Richard Cappleman relates that his father often spoke of hearing his grandfather say how the ships drifted in with the flowing tide towards Speeton Cliffs and back on the ebb, cannonading heavily all the time. In the course of the engagement H.M.S. Serapis lost one of her anchors, and a few years ago the Scarborough steam trawler Dunrobin trawled up from about the identical spot an anchor, which is of the size and pattern used by the King's ships at that period. The relic is now mounted in the garden in front of the Grand Hotel, Scarborough; but it is as well to remember, when rending the descriptive notice-board at Scarborough, that H.M.S. Nautilus, which drove ashore and was completely wrecked opposite to Speeton Cliffs about the same period, also lost an anchor off the Brigg by the parting of her cable, when in the stress of the storm she strove to check her fatal driving to the land. The Nautilus went down all standing, with her treasury chest, though her crew was saved, and her guns have never been recovered. They are sandwarped, though it is said that at certain stages of the tide, under certain weather conditions, they are visible below the water, and at no great depth.
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