page_title: Filey
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Filey / History
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Oswald's church, Filey. This is a photo of listed building number 1316455.
context_page_description: Filey is a small town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the East Riding of Yorkshire, it is part of the borough of Scarborough between Scarborough and Bridlington on the North Sea coast. Although it was a fishing village, it has a large beach and became a popular tourist resort.
  According to the 2011 UK census, Filey parish had a population of 6,981, in comparison to the 2001 UK census population figure of 6,819, and a population of 6,870 in 1991.
context_section_description: In 1857 the foundations of a 4th-century Roman signal station were discovered at the Carr Naze cliff edge at the northern end of Filey Bay. The structure is 50 metres long with a square tower 14 meters wide, a defensive ditch and ramparts from a later era. Excavations at the time of the find and subsequently in the 1920s and 1990s uncovered Roman pottery and hoards of coins. The site is a protected Scheduled Monument. The find of Roman remains supports the case for Filey being the Roman settlement of Portus Felix.
  The 12th century parish church dedicated to St Oswald, on Church Hill in the north of the town, is a Grade I listed building. It is the oldest building in Filey and Nicholas Pevsner wrote "This is easily the finest church in the NE corner of the East Riding" (Buildings of England). St Oswald's has nearly 1,500 pieces of well-preserved medieval graffiti on the roof of the tower, ranging from initials up to complicated images of fully rigged sailing vessels, including one known as a Whitby Cat. The graffiti covers around 400 years of Filey's history, and maps out identifiable people, their occupations, changes in literacy and coastal shipping, the start of tourism in the area, and even a possible record of 17th century plague. The graffiti was recorded and analysed by Historic England in 2016.
  Filey was a small village until the 18th century when visitors from Scarborough arrived seeking the peace and quiet that Filey then offered. In 1835 a Birmingham solicitor called John Wilkes Unett bought 7 acres (2.8 ha) of land and built the Crescent, later known as the Royal Crescent, which was opened in the 1850s.
  Fishing at Filey has been tradition, going on for a multitude of centuries,  with most of those undertaking it coming from a long line of fishermen and women in their families. The fishing boats at Filey are cobles, like most of the others along the Yorkshire and North East coasts, and the catch is mostly sea trout. Limitations have been placed upon how and where they use their nets which also trap salmon; some fear this may lead to the end of the fishing industry in Filey. In 1804, a lifeboat was procured for the town and it became a Royal National Lifeboat Institution asset in 1852. Filey Lifeboat Station is still in existence and has an inshore and an all-weather boat on station.
  English composer Frederick Delius stayed as a boy on the Crescent with his family at Miss Hurd's boarding house (number 24) in 1876 and 1877, and then at Mrs Colley's (number 24) in 1897.
  In 1931 the spire of a church was damaged by the Dogger Bank earthquake.
  For more than 40 years Butlin's Filey Holiday Camp was a major factor in Filey's economy. Building began in 1939 and continued during the Second World War when it became an air force station known as RAF Hunmanby Moor. In 1945 it became a popular holiday resort with its own railway station and by the late 1950s could cater for 10,000 holiday makers. It closed in 1984, causing a decrease in the holiday makers visiting Filey.
  Filey was historically split between the North Riding of Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, with the boundary running along Filey Beck. When County Councils were formed by the Local Government Act 1888, the whole of Filey was placed in the East Riding.
  Filey also boasts the Grade II listed Langford Villa on The Crescent (c. 1830) which was often chosen by the famous chocolatier Sir Joseph Terry as his place to "summer"; it is situated next door but one to The White Lodge Hotel.
  In 2018, the town was featured in the Tour de Yorkshire for the first time.
caption: St Oswald's Church
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