2001

2001

2001 saw the completion of the Whitby Harbour Development Plan amongst lots of other changes to take place including Scarborough Borough Council adopting a new logo which included the words, 'A great place to live, work & play'. The Women's Royal Voluntary Service was set up in this year, in which volunteers went around every 2 Monday's loaning books for free or Dvd's, Video's & Cd's could be loaned for a small charge. This year also saw Bryan Clarkson set up his pleasure cruise business, with a vessel named 'Sky Lark'.

The Scarborough Borough Council Logo

At the turn of the year, Whitby Hospital's maternity unit was closed for a few days due to staff shortages owing to illness & holiday. The go-ahead was given for the Old Brewery at East Row, Sandsend, to be converted & extended from offices & study to form 2-storey living accommodation. Permission was also granted to One2One for a 15ft flagpole to be erected on the top of the telephone exchange in Spring Hill to allow an antennae to be fitted.

Also around the start of the year, the mini-roundabout to replace the former 'T' junction at the junctions of Bagdale, Chubb Hill & Downdinner Hill was complete, at a cost of £30,000. The junction with South End Gardens remained marked as a separate junction off Chubb Hill but in practice, when driving the road, it was probably best to deal with it as if it was on the roundabout.

On 16th January, the lifeboat from Amble, Northumbria, was being towed down the coast with her destination being Ramsgate in Kent, but only made it as far South as Robin Hood's Bay when she started taking in water. The boat that was towing her, an ocean-going tug Goliath, had to ditch her and attempts were made to run her aground but these failed. It was decided to tow her back to Whitby and run her aground near the West Pier onto the beach. The sea was too rough for them to successfully re-float her and it wasn't until the 24th January that they managed to finally re-float her and tow her into Whitby Harbour, where Parkol Marine did what they could to her, before she sent abroad for more extensive works.

In February, Whitby Tourist Information Centre in Dock End was given a £300,000 refurbishment, and so the centre temporarily moved out into a caravan that was sited in front of the building. The building was extended in 2000 as well as other tidying up work at Dock End, which was made possible thanks to £250,000 from Yorkshire Water & money made available from the European Development Fund. The refurbishment was complete by May.

Also in February, a new Pegasus Crossing was installed at Hawsker on the A171, to allow horse riders, cyclists & walkers using the old railway line between Whitby & Scarborough to cross the road more safely & re-join the railway. The scheme cost £42,000 & included a separate crossing section for horse riders which included a button higher up, and was the first crossing of its kind in North Yorkshire. The funds for the crossing came from £282,000, won by Scarborough Borough Council from European Pesca funds, which was to be spent on the whole of the old railway track.

Chubb Hill/Downdinner Hill roundabout from Pannett Park; Pegasus Crossing at Hawsker

Also around this time, the Skelton & Brotton by-pass was complete with the final stage opening to complete the £14.5M scheme, 5 years after it first started with the 0.7mile stretch from Saltburn Lane to the Potash Railway. The final phase of the project to be completed was the section from the A173 to Kilton Lane. The whole section of by-pass was 3.5miles long.

Back in Whitby, the final part of Whitby's Harbour Development Plan was to get underway. Work on the fish quay was to start in a £190,000 scheme that saw new storage buildings built to replace rusting steel pens, new walls built & new fencing and gates put up. An automatic barrier was installed to prevent any unauthorised vehicles accessing the quay.

Whitby Fish Quay with its automatic barrier

Eskdale School got a new mini-bus, costing £25,000, bright yellow in colour, from a Stockton-based company. The money would be paid back at £5,000 a year, but the school had already raised £10,000 for the new vehicle. The Black Dog Brewery, situated at St. Hilda's Business Centre, closed its doors for the last time, after 3 years in the business. In April, a Thirsk-based company, Hambleton Ales, initially bought the recipe to one of the Black Dog's most popular ale's, the 'Rhartas', before proceeding to purchase the other 2.

Other 20mph zones were added around the town at this time, following on from the one installed in Byland Road in the previous year. This time, the zone started on the entrance into New Quay Road, meaning all of Baxtergate & Wellington Road were in the zone. The zone also continued across the Swing Bridge & to the car park at Church Street. The lowered speed limit was also enforced through to Pier Road to the top of Khyber Pass. Also the lower part of Flowergate & Cliff Street were also in the 20mph zone.

20mph speed limit for town centre, starting at New Quay Road

Also in February, a new scheme was set up called 'Learn Direct', which ran from Whitby Coliseum. The scheme was set up to allow Whitby people to learn a variety of different computer courses for a fee of £1 a hour, after paying a registration fee of £5. The scheme also allowed people to surf the internet for £1 an hour without paying a registration fee. In March, Spring Vale Medical Centre got a new telephone system, which provided a direct link to Whitby Hospital.

A new staggered crossing was installed on Helredale Road near its junction with Larpool Lane, meaning pedestrians could cross 1 half of the road at a time, helping traffic move more freely. An anti-skid surface was also laid further up the road on the corner near the junction of Abbots Road, following a crash in the previous year, which saw a car demolish a garden wall. The chance was also taken to lower kerbs at the bottom of Larpool Lane.

Crossing installed on Helredale Road with its junction with Larpool Lane

In March, new warning signs with bright yellow backgrounds were erected and markings painted on the road in Sneaton to deter drivers from speeding through the village. Lythe School was extended to provide class 2 with a classroom, who previously had to use the school's hall for lessons. The extension, costing £90,000, also included new toilets & a storage area with a paved section of playground to the exterior.

April, saw the completion of the replacement of the Spa Ladder, with a walkway slope to link the East Pier & the Haggerlythe. The work was part of the Whitby Harbour Development Plan, which also included placing rock armour at the foot of the cliff, where the new slope would be. The Haggerlythe part of the project was officially unveiled in July.

The Haggerlythe section of the Whitby Harbour Development Plan upon completion

For more photos of the Spa Ladder project, please click here

In April, the Foot & Mouth disease hit the area, when it infected a farm in Ruswarp. It was to wreak havoc not only in the farming industry, but also to the general public, when every area of farmland became a quarantined area. Also at this time, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway bought the Grosmont Station buildings for £120,000 after previously renting the buildings from the owners Railtrack, who owned the Esk Valley line at the time. The buildings mostly dated from 1845, when they were upgraded to be compatible with the introduction of stream haulage. Also at this time, the works on Brunswick Methodist Church were complete, after David Gray bought it in 1997 for £55,000. The total expenditure however hit the £150,000 mark when it was discovered a lot of work needed doing to the church, including securing a subsiding porch. At this time, Whitby Bus Station was bought by North Yorkshire County Council from Arriva at a cost of £250,000, with a further £50,000 being set aside for works that needed to be carried out. Also at this time, Lythe church got its own car park in an adjacent field. Church goers previously had to park on the road, but following a £5,000 grant, drainage was installed, a gate was added and matting was laid to make the grass more stable.

In May, Dunsley Hall Hotel opened a new £100,000 conference & banquet Suite. In Sleights, the Spar shop on Coach Road was granted permission to demolish a couple of lean-to buildings to the rear of the premises and extend the main building. Also in May, a footbridge at Sandsend was replaced by locals after it collapsed in the November 2000 floods. The men lifted it out of the beck, installed 2 new poles, and made it stronger. They also installed a bench to mark the millennium with '2000' clearly carved.

Back in Whitby, the Rugby Club had made some changes to their club house, including making it wheelchair friendly, adding parking, making the building level access throughout & a disabled accessible toilet. Tony Hewitt was appointed head teacher of Caedmon School after the retirement of Chris Cowell in 2000. Willow Tots, running on Wednesdays 10:00-11:30am was handed over to Coliseum Kids & was run by Mandy Clarkson & Bev Higgin.

The Whitby Shell Shop, a Victorian hut on Khyber Pass was very badly damaged after a car failed to make a right-hand bend. Network opened a new unit, the Penthouse in May. After a trial period of a few months, the fully-fledged project went ahead to help residents to develop skills of independent living, in a caring and supportive, residential setting. Keeping up with the times, Whitby Library could now offer the loan of DVD's.

The tall ship 'Grand Turk' entered Whitby Harbour on 14th June on what was to be the first of many visits for the ship. She docked at Dock End until 25th June before making her way back home to St. Katherine Dock, London. Fishburn Park F.C. of the Teesside League was to get its own ground after 20 years of campaigning and having to use the Showfield for their home matches. The club were happy to be able to move to Broomfield Farm on land owned by Yorkshire Water. They used £1,500 of their own money to create the pitch and got a grant from the F.A. Football Foundation. Eskdale School provided changing facilities until permanent arrangements of their own could be made.

The Angel Hotel bar underwent a refurbishment in what saw the bar close for 2 months. The long bar to the right and small bar to the rear in the pool table area were refurbished and the central bar taken out. £350,000 of lottery cash was awarded to the Captain Cook Museum of Grape Lane, the former house of Captain James Cook. The cash was used to make it disabled friendly & allow visitors to access Walkers Cottage & Courtyard at the rear of the museum.

The £3M sea-defence work at Robin Hood's Bay, by AMEC Capital Projects, was unveiled on 11th July, 5 years after work began. Also in the same nature, a little up the coast, rocks were being shipped in for use in the sea-defence work at Cowbar & Staithes. Work at Cowbar was paid for by Redcar & Cleveland Council and at Staithes by Scarborough Borough Council, in work that saw 50,000 tonnes of rock shipped in, which arrived in 3 separate shipments. A 100-metre-long road to Cowbar Cottages was strengthened by 120 piles bored through clay into rock up to 20 metres deep. In its neighbouring village, Hinderwell, plans for a new village hall were passed, that would see the old hall, constructed of wood & asbestos, which had stood for almost 70 years, demolished, along with a separate toilet block, to make way for the new hall, off Pond Farm Close, which would comprise of 2 adjoining buildings, a 2-storey sports hall & a single storey function room, meeting room, changing rooms, toilets & kitchen.

Back in Whitby, permission was granted to build houses & flats on the site of the Mount School building in East Crescent. It would see the former 3-storey building demolished, previously used as a plastics factory and more recently, a training centre. 3 new antennas were to be sited at Whitby Town F.C on a new 21-metre lattice tower, that would also hold floodlights. This was following refusal by Whitby Hospital Board to site them on top of the hospital. In 2000, permission was given to convert the old church hall in Newton Street to a house, and in July 2001, the owner was given permission to add a garage and porch.

July also saw the arrival of the annual lifeboat weekend... for Scarborough. What has this got to do with Whitby you might ask? Well, read on and you'll see. This particular year saw the Robert & Ellen Robson lifeboat, the last rowing lifeboat of Whitby, venture to Scarborough. But on launch off the Pier Road slipway, it grounded and would not move. This called for the help of the former motor lifeboat, the George & Mary Webb, and this too got into difficulty, after the rope snapped & got caught around its propeller. The current Whitby lifeboat then came to the rescue, or so they thought, but as the tide was going out at the time, that too became stuck. A crew from Skinningrove came and assisted the old rowing boat off the shore and the George & Mary Webb got off in the morning when the tide came in, after owner, Barry Sneddon, stayed on the boat all night. Needless to say, the Robert & Ellen Robson got to Scarborough, after spending the night at Whitby Marina, as was the original intention.

Also in July, a 150-year old dry dock was discovered under the old Whitehall Shipyard, when preparatory works were being carried out on the land to transform it into a housing development.

August 2001 saw Trailways of Hawsker get permission to site some old railway track with a carriage, and some picket fencing with railway station-themed lamps & benches. Also in August, work started on replacing a 900-metre stretch of gas mains in Helredale Road & Stainsacre Lane. The work was stopped to allow for Regatta traffic though, and commenced soon after. The Co-operative supermarket was given permission to build an extension on its warehouse, but was told to be careful with foundations as it was believed there was a dry dock beneath. Another plan to be passed included a house to be built on an over-grown garden area of Sandsend, next to Holly Cottage. Permission was also given to Steve Daley to sell cars from the rear of Stakesby Road, which was previously used for furniture storage and restoration. The former SupaSave in Flowergate was altered. The shopping arcade, with 2 shops, was altered to provide 3 units for shops or offices at the rear of what was Complete Bathrooms at the time. Also during this year, the erection of houses at Waterloo Place was complete, following earlier demolition of the former Waterloo Cinema, which was more recently used as an indoor market and was built in 1890 when it opened as the Star Theatre, later to become Waterloo Hall, which in turn became The Waterloo Cinema in 1910.

Houses at Waterloo Place stand in place of the former Waterloo Cinema, built in 1890

August also saw the R.N.L.I. get a new system, by NTL, to takeover the old pager system from BT. The benefits of the new system was that it could alert the crew to more specifics of the incident before they even got to the station, shaving vital minutes off their response time. Whitby Table Tennis Club was awarded a grant of £2,376 to upgrade its facilities, including getting new tables, bats and balls and also new scoring machines. At Ruswarp, a new cottage was to be built, next to Bridge Cottage, as a replacement. As soon as the new cottage was complete, the old cottage had to be demolished. Moving along to the other end of The Carrs to Briggswath, the church was re-opened on 31st August, following the flooding of November 2000.

In September, new £6M water treatment works at Hinderwell were officially in operation, which treated water from Staithes, Dale House, Cowbar, Runswick Bay, Hinderwell & Ellerby. Pumping stations were built at Staithes & Runswick Bay & the new treatment works at Hinderwell, which was part of the £120M Coast Care scheme by Yorkshire Water. Also at this time, a new mobile police station was introduced, whereby 2 police officers would be out and about travelling the Whitby district in a £60,000 vehicle, to keep their eye on situations and to be available to talk to the public.

Whitby Town F.C's manager Harry Dunn, was handed a new car by Harrison's Garage, a Rover 45 connoisseur. Also around this time, Green Lane Play Centre had to close temporarily after its heating system broke down.

Scarborough Borough Council gave the go-ahead for a 60-year coast protection scheme. Whitby's 2 piers were among 20 sites between Abbey Cliff & Sandsend to be identified to need work carrying out. £74M in 2001 was the total estimated expenditure for the overall scheme. £9M of which was for the Whitby Piers, which needed rock armour installed.

Work started on repairing the wall bordering the Donkey Path, after much debate as to who the wall belonged to. The owners of the wall were in fact the Strickland Estate, but it was North Yorkshire County Council who made the decision to get the work underway, as the path had been closed since the previous year. Work, costing £60,000 got underway to knock down the wall and re-build it.

Also in September, it was decided the cliff lift, which takes people between the sands and the West Cliff, needed a major over-haul. The car, dating to the installation of the lift around 1900, was past its usability, as parts were not available for it. In the past, parts were sourced from another old lift, but these were now exhausted. The lift was to be automated and fitted with C.C.T.V equipment, which would be monitored from the bottom end of the tunnel, leading to the lift, near the beach. The operator would also take money from customers. The top station was also to be spruced up.

In October, work was carried out to remove old sewerage pipes from the bed of the harbour. Work by Yorkshire Water, costing £20,000 needed the assistance of B.S. Diving Ltd of Ravenscar & the council's dredger. The pipes were causing problems for marine traffic accessing the harbour at low tide.

Also at this time, Sleights Village Hall was to get new plumbing to replace lead pipes, which were also in the caretaker's house until recently, until the same work was carried out there. Scarborough Borough Council paid £1,350 towards the cost of £1,750, with the remaining £400 being met by the Village Hall.

24 signs were erected in Whitby around this time to aid pedestrians to find visitor attractions and places of interest in a scheme costing £25,000. The scheme was part of Whitby Tourism Renewal Scheme, a 2-year project designed to boost the town's visitor attractions.

Also in October, it was announced of a new system being used by ambulance drivers at the time, which helped them reach their destination faster. This was thanks to a computerised mapping system called 'TENYAS', which not only displayed maps but was also able to give audio instructions too. The mapping system covered 4,500 square miles.

In November, the long-awaited Sports Centre for Whitby looked a reality for the first time, with the first spade cutting into the ground, adjacent to the Indoor Pool. Sport England handed over a grant of £1.2M towards the total cost of £1.8M for the project. Ruswarp Mart had closed in February of this year due to the Foot & Mouth disease. However, with the disease now under control, the mart re-opened as a collection centre for stock.

In November also, major gas works were being undertaken in the town centre by Transco, which saw St. Anne's Staith, Haggersgate & Pier Road closed to traffic, while ductile iron mains were replaced with plastic pipes. Khyber Pass was made 2-way to allow deliveries to access Pier Road & Haggersgate. Also around this time, a new birthing pool was unveiled in Whitby Hospital's Maternity Unit.

Thornton's chocolate store opened in the former 'Picture This' shop in Baxtergate. The owners of the old telephone exchange in Robin Hood's Bay were finally given permission to convert it into a holiday cottage. The exchange had been unused since the early 80's but since had had several planning applications refused for the building to be converted. In 1996, the occupant at the time was re-housed due to environmental health issues. Planning permission was also given for a house to be built by the railway line at the foot of Bog Hall at Whitby.

In December, Whitby's Indoor Pool was closed for 11 weeks, to allow for an overhaul of the plant room, which housed electrical & heating equipment. InterActive got a new base at number 1, The Archway, Skinner Street. The premises had larger staff offices than their previous premises & also an interview room, store room & it also now housed the toy library.

Yorventure gave a £8,900 grant to the Pyman Institue in Sandsend to allow works to be carried out. The institute, built in 1900, had its ceiling lowered, damp proofing carried out & improvements to the kitchen & toilet facilities. At the end of this year Whitby Archives & Heritage Centre found a new home after months of trying. They finished the year moving boxes of artefacts from the old Grape Lane building to their new home at the back of Trinity House, Flowergate, which they would move into in 2002.

Also in 2001, Church Street Methodist Church was converted into Alessi's Italian Restaurant by Mousa Mohamad. Work cost £500,000 to convert the old church, Amonite House. Eskdale Stores had a floor added on top of the shop, which would contain two 1 bedroom flats. Also, the old station buildings at West Cliff Station were re-developed into living accommodation, to become part of Beechings Mews, which was further developed over the coming couple of years. The waiting shelter was also converted into a car port during the works.

Left: Eskdale Stores has a first floor added; Right: West Cliff Station buildings turned into living accommodation in this year