Bombardment Garden, West Cliff

Nestled amid the ice cream kiosks and Victorian shelters of West Cliff is Bombardment Garden. This evocative memorial to those who died when two German ships opened fire without notice or provocation is a hidden gem. It is well worth a few minutes of your time as you stroll along the promenade.

The ships fired at least 100 large shells into the town of Whitby, starting at 9.05 am on 16th December 1914. Miraculously, only two people were killed and another was seriously injured. About 30 houses were razed to the ground. The bombardment lasted for seven minutes before the ships sailed away as silently as they had approached.

One of the dead was coastguard Fredrick Randall, a married man who lived in one of the admiralty cottages. He had just stepped outside his house when a shell burst close to one of the outbuildings and blew his head clean off.

The Bombardment Garden includes a replica of Fredrick's cottage as it would have looked after the incident. The memorial was unveiled on 16th December 2014, a century after the bombardment that shocked the whole town.Read more