The Heart of Bridlington By Simon Haughtone Platinum Quality Author

If you were a devout follower of the Church in Rome and had gone along to the Pilgrimage of Grace with fellow northerners in the protest of 1586, not just at the Dissolution of the Monasteries but the injustices of rural economic, social and political life you would not have survived. Execution was the end that befell the last monk of the Augustian Priory, now the site of the Priory Church of St. Mary, and the last monk in Bridlington to defy the authority: Henry VIII. The church stands at the heart of Bridlington, a constant reminder to locals of the cost of defying a royal dictate.

A small port grew around the fishing trade at Bridlington Quay where the Victorian discovery of a chalybeate spring, 'iron' waters, thought to be a cure for hysteria and other melancholic conditions, provided the town with a new reputation and drew trippers from all over Yorkshire. The Victorian sea-side resort brought the railway and the railway brought the industrial population to stroll the pier and promenade, the pretty gardens and the extraordinary sandy beach with its striking wooden groynes; they keep the local sand in place.

Bridlington's sea wall protects the town from constant erosion; a feature of the Holderness Coast which is rated as the most serious location of sea erosion in Europe losing around 2 metres of the soft clay cliffs each year. From just south of Bridlington in a 60 kilometre stretch to the Humber, 200 metres disappear each century. There is little to be done but observe the full force of the waves from the North Sea. Visitors climb to Flamborough Head to witness dramatic scenes as the North Sea bites chunks of soft cliff from the land. Bridlington watches, protected by the widest of sands and lone sea wall defence.

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