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Runswick Bay, North Yorkshire Coast
Runswick Bay is a bay in North Yorkshire, England. It is also the name of a village located on the western edge of the bay (although the village is sometimes shortened to Runswick on UK road signs). It is 5 miles (8 km) north of Whitby, and close to the villages of Ellerby and Hinderwell. It is a popular tourist attraction due to its picturesque cliffside village, stunning coastal walks and fossil hunting.
The village ran its own lifeboat from 1866, until it was moved to the RNLI station at Staithes in 1978. The boathouse still remains, and has run its own volunteer rescue boat service since 1982. In the late 1880s, Runswick Bay was the site of an art colony
nd Runswick Sands, a white sand beach. It is on the Cleveland Way national trail. Runswick Bay was chosen as Beach of the Year 2020 by The Sunday Times.
The original fishing village was almost completely destroyed by a landslide in 1682. Remarkably, there were no fatalities, as the village was alerted by two mourners at a wake. The village was rebuilt, slightly further to the south, perched on the side of cliffs.
The Marquess of Normanby's Mulgrave Estate owns part of the land in the village which is also in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. The village is located within the Parish of Hinderwell, which at the 2011 census, had a population of 1,875 people.
On the north side of the bay is Cauldron Cliff, and the headland on the south side is known as Kettleness, site of alum mining from 1727 until the late 1800s. Around the edge of the bay is a white sand beach called Runswick Sands, and a series of caves. The largest cave on the bay, Hob Hole, was so named as it was believed to be the home of a 'Hob' (or Boggart) in local folklore. The bay is 1.2 miles (2 km) long. A seawall, made of large boulders, was completed in 1970. Like other parts of the Yorkshire Coast, the area suffers from a high degree of coastal erosion which has made it a popular location for fossil hunting.