East Cleveland Image Archive

A lovely Skilbeck postcard of Skinningrove loaned to us by Mrs Waton. Looking closely, what are the buildings on the left hand side going up the cliff road. Come on you Grovers tell me what they were.

Harold Richards tells us: ”I have many happy memories of Skinningrove, I was born there in 1944, and lived with my Gran and Grandad in Chapel Street. As a kid of 12 or 14 years I used to knock around with Arthur Breckon, also of Chapel Street; his dad Teddy Breckon was in the Coastguards in the mid 1950’s. I was told more than once by Teddy Breckon, the large brick building on the right of the photograph beside the road going up to Dickie Bothroyd’s farm, was a mortuary. This was used if anyone had been washed up on the sands who had drowned. I remember this building well made of old red bricks and a large wooden door. My Grandad was Jack Richards (an image of him is on  the Website – in the pit with a rat on his knee). My Gran, Amy Richards was a member of the Skinningrove Women’s Institute for many years. I left Skinningrove in 1980, when the heart was ripped out of the village as the houses in Chapel Street and the High Street were demolished; as well as Cliff Street, etc. To me this was very sad, as the houses would still have been stood now.”

Thanks to Harold Richards for that reminder about the mortuary, there was also believed to be a  ”Fisherman’s Association?” building at the foot of the hillside road. Can anybody confirm this fact.