The setting of Robin Hood’s Bay, the little old fishing village just south of Whitby on the North Yorkshire Coast was one of the key inspirations for “The Little Church By the Sea” and it’s a place I’ve been visiting all my life.
When I was little, I used to be taken to “Bay” to visit a friend of my mother’s who lived in one of the the new houses at the top of the bank. I loved the view from her garden over the village to beach and the bay beyond, and I especially loved going to visit in the winter when the weather was stormy, but it was cosy in her house looking out over the sweep of the bay.
I also loved the old village with its twisting paths and cottages – we went to see the ancient little cottage that had once belonged to this friend’s family before they moved up the bank – it had her name on the front door back then (and probably still does) but the utter impracticality of living in a cottage with no vehicular access meant that the family cottage had been sold and she and her family now lived in a new house with all mod-cons – and parking! Very few of the cottages in the old village are still lived in, most are holiday cottages, and even fewer (if any) are lived in by the families who had owned them for generations and after whom many are named. Something about the story of the cottage with her name on the door that they had had to leave stuck in my mind – and came out again when I started thinking about a setting for my story.
I had always harboured a secret yearning to live in one of those pretty little cottages – and still do, if I’m honest, despite the impracticality – but if I can’t do it, then at least my heroine can!
There were several villages in North Yorkshire that helped to inspire the fictional village of Rawscar, the setting for my forthcoming novel “The Little Church by the Sea”. Village number one is the lovely Runswick Bay, which has one of the few coastal thatched cottages on the whole of the North Yorkshire coast. (I haven’t researched extensively, but it’s the only one I’ve ever seen). The thatched cottage doesn’t appear in the book though!
The little village tumbles down the hill, the paths between the cottages only big enough for a wheelbarrow, no room for a car. With some very few exceptions, the people who stay in Runswick Bay have to park in the village car park and walk to their holiday homes. There are a few full-time residents of the village, but most of them live in the flat bit at the top of the hill; not so picturesque but easier to reach by car!
Liz Taylorson 