Staithes, Yorkshire: A sixteen-year-old grocer’s apprentice found the sea in this harbour, and smugglers ran the tides here for a century before him.
Staithes sits in a cut between two cliffs on the North Yorkshire coast, a working harbour shaped more by storms than by planning. Most visitors come for the postcard version: red pantile roofs, a maze of narrow lanes, a pub with its feet nearly in the sea. Fewer know that in 1745, a sixteen-year-old grocer’s apprentice stood behind a shop counter here and decided, apparently while staring out of the window at the water, that he would rather be at sea than selling sugar and cloth. His name was James Cook.
Staithes has spent three centuries being two things at once: a smugglers’ harbour that ran contraband past excisemen for generations, and a fishing village that later drew a colony of painters who turned its light and its poverty into an art movement. Both stories are real, and neither gets in the way of the other.
Location: Staithes, North Yorkshire, on the coast between Whitby and Saltburn-by-the-Sea
Best for: maritime history, art history, a working harbour that still smells like one
Getting there: no direct train; nearest stations are Whitby or Saltburn-by-the-Sea, then the X4 Arriva bus or a taxi
Open: the village itself is open at all times; Staithes Museum opens daily, 10:30am to 4:30pm
Admission: free to walk the village; Staithes Museum is free entry, with donations welcomed
The Story of Staithes
Cook’s family moved to Staithes around 1745, when young James was apprenticed to William Sanderson, a grocer and haberdasher, at a shop on the seafront. The apprenticeship lasted about eighteen months. According to the account preserved by Whitby’s Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Cook spent long hours behind the counter looking out at the ships working the harbour, and the pull of it stuck. In 1746, John and Henry Walker, Quaker shipowners in the Whitby coal trade, took him on as a merchant navy apprentice instead. Cook never went back to selling groceries.
By then, Staithes already had a smuggling economy that predated Cook by generations. The harbour’s position, tucked between cliffs and largely hidden from open sea, made it useful for landing contraband long before anyone in the village had heard of a young grocer’s apprentice with ideas about the navy. That geography, a narrow cut that concealed boats from anyone not already looking for them, shaped the village as much as any single trade did.
The other Staithes story arrived a century and a half later. From around 1880, artists began working in the village, first Gilbert Foster, Fred Jackson and Mark Senior, then a wider group that became known as the Staithes Group, or the Northern Impressionists. At its peak between 1894 and 1909, the colony included more than thirty painters, among them Harold and Laura Knight, who lived in the village and kept a studio there between 1898 and 1907. They painted the fishing families as they actually lived, in hard, unglamorous work, rather than as scenery for a postcard. The group held its first exhibition in 1901, and by then Staithes had become one of the few places in England where an entire village had been, at different points, a smugglers’ economy, a naval training ground and an open-air studio.
What You See When You Visit
Staithes still works as a harbour, not a museum piece. Cobles, the traditional flat-bottomed fishing boats of this coast, still tie up below the cliffs, and the tide still decides when boats can get in and out. The village runs along a single main street and a knot of yards and alleys behind it, most of which are too narrow for a car, which is part of why Staithes has kept its shape better than many coastal villages of its size.
Kirkhill and Haseldene, two of the village’s Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings, sit within a conservation area that protects the lifeboat house, the boathouses, and the close-packed cottages that give Staithes its shape from above. Climb Cowbar Bank on the north side of the harbour to Cowbar Nab, and you get the view from which every postcard photograph of Staithes is taken: red roofs stacked down to the water, the beck running out to the sea, cliffs closing in on both sides.
The walk down into the village itself is as much a part of the experience as anything you’ll find at the bottom. Staithes drops away from its car park in a series of steep lanes and stepped alleys, cottages built almost on top of each other, and the sound changes as you descend, traffic noise falling away and gulls and the working harbour taking over. It’s a fifteen-minute walk down and a considerably harder one back up.
The Cod and Lobster Inn sits at the harbour’s edge on the High Street, close enough to the water that the sea has destroyed it outright at least three times, most recently in the Great Storm of 1953, and once before that in 1862. The pub standing today is the third rebuild of that frontage. A sign inside still asks drinkers to use the other door in rough weather, a small, practical reminder of how close the water actually gets.
Why It Matters
Yorkshire’s coast has more than one smuggling village, and Secret Britain has already covered Robin Hood’s Bay, a few miles down the same stretch of coast, where an entire community ran contraband through cellars and passageways built for exactly that purpose. Staithes shares that history, but its second identity, as the place that gave Cook his first look at the sea and later gave a generation of British painters their subject, sets it apart. Few villages of this size can claim a genuine connection to both a naval legend and a documented art movement, independently verified, both still visible in what survives.
That combination is why Staithes rewards a longer look than the postcard view from Cowbar Nab. The harbour that hid smugglers’ boats is the same harbour Cook watched from a shop window, and the same steep light that drew the Knights and their contemporaries still falls on the same red roofs.
When to Go
Staithes works year-round, though the character of a visit changes noticeably with the season, more than in most Yorkshire coastal villages, since so much of what you see and hear depends on the tide and the weather rather than fixed opening hours. Summer brings the busiest streets and the best chance of good weather for the climb to Cowbar Nab. Winter strips the village back to something closer to what the Staithes Group painted: working boats, grey light, a harbour doing exactly what it has always done. Low tide is the better time to see the full sweep of the harbour and the beach beneath Cowbar Nab; check tide times before you go, since Staithes is genuinely tidal in a way that affects what you can walk to.
Getting There
Staithes has no railway station of its own. The nearest stations are Whitby and Saltburn-by-the-Sea, each roughly a £22 taxi fare from the village. The X4 Arriva bus runs every 30 minutes between Middlesbrough and Whitby, calling at Redcar, Saltburn, Loftus, Staithes, Runswick Bay and Sandsend, and is the most practical public transport option if you don’t want to drive. By car, Staithes sits just off the A174 coast road between Whitby and Saltburn; park in the village car park at the top of the bank, since the lanes below are too narrow for most vehicles.
Where to Eat and Drink Nearby
The Cod and Lobster Inn, 61 High Street, sits on the harbour’s edge and has done so since long before its current, third rebuild, serving fresh seafood including its own cod and lobster dish alongside standard pub food.
Where to Stay
The Endeavour, Staithes, Yorkshire. A bed-and-breakfast in the heart of the village, revived in 2022, built around locally sourced produce.
Roraima House, Staithes, Yorkshire. A renovated Victorian bed and breakfast with en-suite rooms and parking, useful given how tight parking is in the village itself.
Worth Knowing
Cook’s apprenticeship in Staithes lasted only around eighteen months before he moved on to Whitby, but the museum and heritage centre built around his time here treat it as the moment the sea first became a real option rather than an idea.
The Staithes Group’s first exhibition in 1901 marked the point at which a loose gathering of painters working along the same coastline became recognised as a movement in its own right, one of the relatively few genuine artist colonies England produced outside the more famous Cornish equivalents.
The Cod and Lobster’s “use the other door” sign is not decoration. The pub has been rebuilt at least three times because of exactly the weather it warns about.
Practical Tips
Check tide times before you visit; parts of the harbour and beach are only accessible at low tide.
Wear proper footwear for Cowbar Bank; it is a genuine climb rather than a stroll, and the cobbled lanes below can be slick after rain.
Park at the top of the village. The lanes down to the harbour are too narrow for most cars, and there is very limited parking near the water.
For walking routes along this stretch of coast, including the Cleveland Way section through Staithes, the AllTrails app has several logged options.
Visit midweek outside summer if you want the village to be something close to how the Staithes Group painted it: quiet streets and working boats rather than crowds.
Reader Q&A
Did Captain Cook actually live in Staithes? Yes, for around eighteen months from 1745, when he was apprenticed to a grocer here before moving to Whitby to start his career at sea.
Is Staithes the same as Robin Hood’s Bay? No, though both are historic smuggling villages on the same stretch of Yorkshire coast. Staithes sits further north, closer to Saltburn, and has its own separate history as an artists’ colony that Robin Hood’s Bay doesn’t share.
Can you drive into Staithes itself? Not down to the harbour. Park in the village car park at the top of the bank and walk down; the lower lanes are too narrow for most vehicles.
Is Staithes Museum worth visiting? Yes, it’s a small, volunteer-run museum with more than 4,000 objects covering the village’s fishing and smuggling history, free to enter, open daily from 10:30am to 4:30pm.
Staithes still runs on the same tide that carried smugglers’ boats past the excisemen and gave a grocer’s apprentice his first real look at the sea, and that pull towards the water is as much a part of Yorkshire’s coastal history as anything you’ll find further down the coast.
