Scarborough History : The Fisherman's Borough 1166 - 1266

King Henry's Charter made the new town into a magnet. It attracted fisherman, craftsmen and traders, rich and poor, from coastal towns, inland villages and older minster boroughs such as Beverley, Ripon and York. They came to rent burgage plots, and build simple one-storey cruck dwellings, sometimes of great length. Bays were added to accommodate herring-houses and masons, labourers, carpenters and carters were employed on the continuing castle works,

During King John's struggles with the influential 'northerner' barons, so decisive in forcing Magna Carta upon him, some £1300 was spent at the castle on massive stoneworks whilst many of the castles of his local opponents were destroyed.

The fish catch was the lasting source of Scarborough wealth. Ill-equipped with arable land, the town had to export fish in order to survive. The catch was landed and marketed at Middle Sandgate. Here came the agents of Fountains Abbey, then the men of the Prior of Malton came to buy herring and cod so vital in a society desperately short of winter meat. Some were dried in the streets or on Castle Hill, salted in the sandpits, or pickled and carried away for sale at the inland villages and monasteries, and the great fish markets of Malton and York.

Monasteries were well pleased, when given houses at Scarborough by pious benefactors, which could be let off fish rents. King Richard the Lionheart, on his way to the Crusade, gave Scarborough Church to the Abbot and Convent of Citeaux, a gift which ensured them a tithe of the cod, codfish oil, herring and other salt and fresh fish brought back to port.