Staithes Museum

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Staithes Museum Free museum with a diverse collection of local historical items from Staithes group paintings to model boats to thousands of historic photographs. Free Entry

Run by a team of enthusiastic volunteers, donations are welcome!

🎨 THE RAFFLE PRIZE HAS ARRIVED!We’re delighted to have Ian Burdall’s beautiful original oil painting safely on display a...
25/10/2026

🎨 THE RAFFLE PRIZE HAS ARRIVED!
We’re delighted to have Ian Burdall’s beautiful original oil painting safely on display at Staithes Museum – ready to be won in our winter raffle!

It shows a familiar view of Staithes Beck, with a boat tied up on the water. But now we’ve had a chance to examine the painting properly, we’ve spotted something interesting… it’s not a coble, but a double-ender – pointed at both ends. And we’re wondering whether it might be the Mizpah.

The painting was generously donated by Ian Burdall, and every raffle ticket helps us raise money to keep the museum sustainable and open through the colder winter months.

🎟️ £5 per ticket
🖼️ One original, framed oil painting
🎫 Only 200 tickets available
📅 Draw: Friday 4 December 2026

Buy your ticket in the museum shop or online here: https://www.staithes-museum.org.uk/product-page/win-an-original-staithes-oil-painting-museum-raffle

A huge thank you to Ian for this wonderful donation. ❤️

You've been hypnotised by it, intrigued by it, stood watching it tick away… but what makes the museum's Devon Sea Clock ...
25/10/2026

You've been hypnotised by it, intrigued by it, stood watching it tick away… but what makes the museum's Devon Sea Clock so special? ⏱️

We’ve put together a little booklet explaining how it works, the clever ideas behind its mechanism, and how accurate timekeeping helped sailors find their way around the world.

There’s a copy handy next to the clock in the museum, so you can have a read while you’re there. And if you’d like to delve into it from home, you can download your own copy for free from the education section of our website.

Because once you start wondering how it all works, there’s quite a lot to discover!

🌊“But the Beck sorted it out for them.”Bill is talking about the old bridge over Staithes Beck, which had fallen into su...
24/10/2026

🌊“But the Beck sorted it out for them.”

Bill is talking about the old bridge over Staithes Beck, which had fallen into such poor repair that two councils were arguing about whose responsibility it was.

Then the Beck had its say.

A flood washed the bridge away — with three young men on it.

It’s just one of the extraordinary stories you'll hear in Bill Hinchley’s heritage walking tour of Staithes, created by the North York Moors National Park.

The film plays all day at Staithes Museum, with comfortable seating downstairs. Come and watch it before exploring the village and you’ll start to see the beck, bridges and streets around you with a whole new collection of stories in mind.

Free museum entry. Donations help us keep sharing Staithes’ history with visitors.

Whose names make it into the history books? And whose are missing?When we explore the history of a place, it's often eas...
23/10/2026

Whose names make it into the history books? And whose are missing?

When we explore the history of a place, it's often easier to find records of some people than others. But a village isn't shaped by its famous names alone.

What about the women who earned a living, raised families, developed skills, created things, cared for others and helped hold their community together?

At Staithes Museum, we want to find out more. Our proposed Women of Staithes audio guide will uncover and celebrate the stories that deserve to be heard.
You can help bring these stories to light!

If you're a Co-op member, please choose Staithes Museum as your cause in the Co-op app. Head to Wallet and select your cause.

Please share this post, too. You never know who might have a story to tell.


🔎 From a Facebook comment to a name in the archives: meet Annie “Auntie Parkie” Parkinson!Sometimes, the smallest clue c...
22/10/2026

🔎 From a Facebook comment to a name in the archives: meet Annie “Auntie Parkie” Parkinson!

Sometimes, the smallest clue can unlock a whole story.

When we were researching Staithes’ mu*****ns girls, Ann Darwin left us a wonderful comment on Facebook:

“My great aunt Annie Parkinson - nee Theaker is in the middle row she’s the girl in the middle and would have been about 20. She lived at 6 North Side - Backside and was known in the village as auntie Parkie in her later years.”

And just like that, one of our mystery mu*****ns girls had a name!

With Ann’s identification, we could return to our family-history records and find Annie Parkinson, née Theaker, in the archive. We discovered more about her family connections — and found this photograph of a young woman in her mu*****ns uniform, helping us put another name to the women who contributed to the war effort.

But we love that the story doesn’t end with a name in a document. Ann remembers Annie as a person with a place in the village and a familiar nickname: Auntie Parkie. The address, 6 North Side – Backside, gives us another thread to follow as we build up our picture of Staithes in the past.

This is what makes local history so rewarding. A photograph survives. Someone recognises a face. A family connection supplies a name. The archives help us follow the trail — and a little more of the village’s history comes into focus.

A huge thank you to Ann for sharing her knowledge. She also promised to see if she could find out more, so we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for another instalment!

Do you remember Auntie Parkie, or have family photographs and stories about Staithes’ mu*****ns girls? We’d love to hear from you. One comment might be the clue that brings another story back to life.

****onsGirls

Today, 91 years ago, Staithes went on the wireless!On 22 October 1935, the BBC broadcast a programme called “Saltersgate...
22/10/2026

Today, 91 years ago, Staithes went on the wireless!
On 22 October 1935, the BBC broadcast a programme called “Saltersgate to Staithes – A Yorkshire Itinerary”, as part of the popular Harry Hopeful series.
Harry Hopeful was a fictional character played by actor Frank Nicholls, but the people he met along his travels were very real. BBC producers travelled around northern communities, meeting local people and collecting their stories, songs, dialect and everyday experiences. The material was then turned into a programme for BBC listeners across the country.
For this particular journey, the route took Harry from Saltersgate across the North York Moors to Staithes, introducing listeners to the people and character of our corner of Yorkshire.
And this isn't just something we've found mentioned in an old newspaper. The British Library Sound Archive still has surviving recordings from the broadcast, preserved on the original BBC archive discs. They include several excerpts from Saltersgate to Staithes, broadcast on this day in 1935.
Even more excitingly, the Museum has a copy of the original programme script in our archives. We're now trying to work out how we can listen to the surviving recordings and discover exactly which Staithes voices were captured by the BBC 91 years ago.
So, on this day in 1935, somewhere in the BBC studios, people from Staithes were speaking into a microphone – and their voices were travelling far beyond the village.
91 years later, we're hoping to hear them again. 📻

If you stopped to read absolutely everything in Staithes Museum, you’d be here for the rest of your life. And honestly? ...
21/10/2026

If you stopped to read absolutely everything in Staithes Museum, you’d be here for the rest of your life. And honestly? You’d probably want to be! 😂

A visitors’ book from 1944, a poem praising the lifeboat *Ever Ready*, a furious verse about a naughty cow, a radio programme script… and that’s just a tiny sample of the words tucked away in our archives.

Every scrap of writing has a story to tell, and you never quite know what you’re going to find next. 📜

So next time you visit, leave yourself a little extra time. You might come in for the history, but you could easily lose an afternoon to a particularly troublesome coo.

🎨 WIN A LITTLE PIECE OF STAITHES!We've got something special to help keep Staithes Museum open through the winter months...
20/10/2026

🎨 WIN A LITTLE PIECE OF STAITHES!

We've got something special to help keep Staithes Museum open through the winter months: an original, framed oil painting of Staithes Beck, generously donated by the artist, Ian Burdall.

The painting captures the familiar sight of a traditional coble tied up on the Beck – a lovely bit of Staithes to hang on your wall. And now, it could be yours!

🎟️ £5 per ticket
🖼️ One original oil painting to be won
🎫 Just 200 tickets available
📅 The winning number will be drawn on Friday 4 December 2026

We're hoping to raise £1,000 to help keep the museum sustainable and open during the colder winter months. Every ticket helps us care for our collections and keep sharing the stories of Staithes.

You can buy your ticket in person from the museum shop or through our online shop. Online buyers will receive their unique ticket number by email.

So, fancy a little Staithes art for your home? Or perhaps you know someone who'd love it? This could be their Christmas present sorted! 😉

👉 Enter the raffle at the museum, or through our online shop: https://www.staithes-museum.org.uk/product-page/win-an-original-staithes-oil-painting-museum-raffle

A huge thank you to Ian Burdall for donating this beautiful painting, Gary and Sonia for helping us organise the raffle, and to everyone who supports the museum. ❤️

Good luck, everyone!

📖 A lifetime of Staithes stories: Edward Hugill remembers his dad and the villageWhat was life like in Staithes when a b...
20/10/2026

📖 A lifetime of Staithes stories: Edward Hugill remembers his dad and the village

What was life like in Staithes when a broken arm might be splinted with a deckchair, a neighbour could summon the village’s unofficial doctor with an emergency bell, and the sea could send floodwater straight down your chimney?

We’ve just recorded an interview with Edward Hugill, who grew up in Staithes in the 1930s and 1940s, and his memories are wonderful!

Edward tells us about his father George, who treated injured people and animals, made his own remedies and helped save a young boy from drowning. He remembers the great storm of 1953, fishing with his Uncle Nels, wartime evacuees, sailors sleeping on straw at the Shoulder of Mutton, and a village parrot with a rather colourful vocabulary. 🦜

There are funny stories, dramatic rescues and touching family memories, including the final hymn sung by Edward’s grandfather. Together, they paint a vivid picture of a close-knit fishing and mining community, full of resourceful people and unforgettable characters.

Read the full story on our blog and step back into a very different Staithes — told in the words of someone who was there - you can find it on the musuem's website!

Have you heard stories about any of the people or places Edward mentions? We’d love to hear your memories, too!

🌳 A family tree helps us piece together a Mu****on Girl's story!As part of our Mu****ons Girls project, we’ve been using...
19/10/2026

🌳 A family tree helps us piece together a Mu****on Girl's story!

As part of our Mu****ons Girls project, we’ve been using the names kindly shared by local people to find out more about the women in our photographs. And one of our most useful resources so far has been the family history research of Eileen Huby.

Here’s a page from Eileen’s painstakingly researched family trees, showing Lily Codling’s family. We can see her father, John Codling, who was a confectioner, her mother, Elizabeth Hodgson, and her eight brothers and sisters.

We’re still working on creating an index to Eileen’s incredible body of work — we’re up to book number 172 so far! But even before the indexing is finished, it’s already helping us connect the names shared by local families with the faces in our photographs.

A huge thank you to everyone who has helped us with this project, and to Eileen for leaving us such a wonderful resource. There are so many more stories waiting to be uncovered! ❤️

****onsGirls

Address

High Street
Staithes
TS135BQ

Opening Hours

Monday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Tuesday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Wednesday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Thursday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Friday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Saturday 10:30am - 4:15pm
Sunday 10:30am - 4:15pm

Telephone

+441947841454

Website

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