1829 the inhabitants of many of the cottages originally forming the village of Kettleness were warned of impending danger by subterranean noises.  Fearing a subsidence of the cliff, they betook themselves to a small schooner lying in the bay.  This wise move had not long been accomplished, when a huge section of the ground occupied by the cottages slid down the great cliff and the next morning there was little to be seen but a sloping mound of lias shale at the foot of the precipice.  The villagers recovered some of their property by digging, and some pieces of broken crockery from one of the cottages are still to be seen on the shore near the ferryman’s hut, where the path joins the shore.

This sandy beach, lapped by the blue waves of Runswick Bay, is one of the finest spots on the rocky coast-line of Yorkshire.  A trickling waterfall drops perpendicularly down the blackish rocks from a considerable height, while above it are the towering cliffs of shale, perfectly bare in one direction, and clothed with grass and bracken in another.  At the foot of the rocks a layer of jet appears a few inches above the sand.

You look northwards across the sunlit sea to the rocky heights hiding Port Mulgrave and Staithes, and on the further side of the bay you see tiny Runswick’s red roofs, one above the other, on the face of the cliff.  Here it is always cool and pleasant in the hottest weather, and from the broad shadows cast by the precipices above one can revel in the sunny land and sea-scapes without that fishy odour so unavoidable in the villages.  When the sun is beginning to climb down the sky in the direction of Hinderwell, and everything is bathed in a glorious golden light, the ferryman will row you across the bay to Runswick, but a scramble over the rocks on the beach will be repaid by a closer view of the now half-filled-up Hob Hole.  The fisher-folk believed this cave to be the home of a kindly-disposed fairy or hob, who seems to have been one of the slow-dying inhabitants of the world of mythology implicitly believed in by the Saxons.  And these beliefs died so hard in these lonely Yorkshire villages that until recent times a mother would carry her child suffering from whooping-cough along the beach to the mouth of the cave.  There she would call in a loud voice, ’Hob-hole Hob! my bairn’s gotten t’kink cough.  Tak’t off, tak’t off.’  One can see the child’s parents gazing fearfully into the black depths of the cavern, penetrating the cliff for 70 feet, and finally turning back to the village in the full belief that the hob would stay the disease.

The steep paths and flights of roughly-built steps that wind above and below the cottages are the only means of getting about in Runswick.  The butcher’s cart every Saturday penetrates into the centre of the village by the rough track which is all that is left of the good firm road from Hinderwell after it has climbed down the cliff.  To this central position, close to the post-box, the householders come to buy their supply of meat for Sunday, having their purchases weighed on scales placed on the flap at the back of the cart.  While the butcher is doing his thriving trade the postman arrives to collect letters from the pillar-box, Placing a small horn to his lips, he blows a blast to warn the villagers that the post is going, and, having waited for the last letter, climbs slowly up the steep pathway to Hinderwell.