Fylingthorpe

Two counters, one village larder

Barnards has stood opposite the playpark since 1938, doing the work of a bakery, a butcher and a takeaway pizzeria at the same address. The counter runs to sourdough and white rolls, pies and pasties, traybakes, sandwiches, soup and homemade meals, its own pork sausages, and a Margherita pizza to carry out. It is a lot for one shop in a village this size.

A little way along, Thorpe Stores sits on Moorland Terrace and covers most of the rest: groceries and freezer food, fresh pasties, hot sandwiches, breakfast baps and coffee. Between the two, you can eat well here without leaving the village.

The inn and the lie of the land

The Fylingdales Inn on Thorpe Lane serves seasonal, locally sourced food, cask ales and wine.

Fylingthorpe sits inland above Robin Hood’s Bay. The ground rises steeply to the north and west and falls east towards the sea along the King’s Beck valley. The historic core is dense around the green; late in the nineteenth century, larger villas went up along Thorpe Lane, set to catch the sea views.

Halls, smugglers and two St Stephens

Thorpe Hall is a sandstone house with 1680 carved over the door, the Farsyde arms above it and additions dated 1835 and 1844. Its stone gateposts stand beside an old ford at the south end of the village. A local smuggling tradition tells of the hall’s squire financing the trade and an underground stone-lined chamber holding gin, tobacco, brandy and silk.

Both churches are dedicated to St Stephen. Old St Stephen’s on Church Lane was rebuilt in 1821 as a single-cell preaching church. It retains box pews, a gallery on Roman Doric columns, a three-decker pulpit with sounding board, an early-eighteenth-century font, the Farsyde family pew, shipwreck memorials, lifeboat-rescue records and rare maiden’s garlands once carried in funeral processions. On its exposed hillside above the sea, the old church evokes “an old mariner gazing out to sea.” St Stephen’s on Thorpe Road, built in 1868–70 to G. E. Street’s designs, is French-influenced Gothic in local sandstone, with stained glass attributed to Henry Holiday and two bronze relief memorials, including one dated 1912, to those lost at sea.

Tracks, tides and practical arrivals

Walking starts at the edge of the village. The Cinder Track, the old Scarborough-to-Whitby railway, now runs 21 miles as a bridleway for walkers and cyclists, passing Fylingthorpe with views across parkland to the villas and the older core. From Robin Hood's Bay a mile-and-a-half loop drops to Boggle Hole, with rockpooling on the shore at low tide.

Whitby, the practical station and market town, is about six miles by the B1447, and the Arriva X93 and X94 buses stop in the village on their way between Middlesbrough, Whitby and Scarborough. For families there is a playground, a cricket pitch, a football pitch and allotments.

Between moorland and sea

From the village outskirts, farmland opens towards the coast while moorland rises behind. Trees, hedgerows and stream corridors soften the historic core, and long views over Robin Hood’s Bay reward the higher approaches.