Seamer Fascinating Facts

Book CoverSeamer in Recent History

  • Well  perhaps not so recent when in AD 1086 this village was known as as Semær,  Semare or more exotically Samara. The name may have been taken from Old English for ‘lake’ indeed there was a Lake Flixton at Starr Carr 10,000 years ago see oldest Yorkshireman‘.
  • In 1603 the plague raged  along  the northeast coast from Seamer, Whitby, Runswick Bay and Robin Hoods Bay. The Seamer population was decimated by this ‘Black Death’ but the village survived.
  • Six years later the King granted Seamer and the chapels of Cayton and East Ayton a market, a fair and the right to despatch immediate justice to criminals.
  •  Scarborough was not amused and a couple of years later managed to get the market closed.
  • In1644 a camp of Parliamentarian soldiers was stationed in Seamer. During the Civil War Scarborough castle switched allegiance from the Parliamentarians to the Royalists  only to be sieged by these parliamentarians.
  • By 1760 Seamer had nine inns soon to be followed by Primitive and Wesleyan chapels being erected. The wooden Saxon church had been replaced with a stone building with a tower centuries earlier.
  • Parish Council was formed in 1894.The economy of the parish was based on agriculture and there were 27 farmers recorded in 1913.
  • Since the establishment of the railway and  after the First World War the population explosion has seen an increase from 681 to now stand at 4,000and growing.
  • There is still a railway station and junction despite Dr Beeching. Trains go south towards Sheffield and westwasrd on the other line.
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