GRISTHORPE is a township, one mile from the coast, with a station on the Hull and Scarborough branch of the North Eastern railway, 2 miles west-by-north from Filey and 5 ½ south-east from Scarborough, in the Whitby division of the North Riding, wapentake of Pickering Lythe, petty sessional division of Pickering Lythe East, union and county court district of Scarborough. The village is supplied with water by the Filey Water Co. The church of St. Thomas, erected in 1897 by W. M. B. Beswick esq. in memory of his son, Brian Beswick, is an iron building, and is served by the clergy of Filey. The tithe is worth £8, and is impropriated There are Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels. Redcliff, the highest point of the cliffs inclosing Gristhorpe Bay, is 285 feet above high water level. A hollowed-out oak tree, 7 feet 6 inches long by about 3 feet in thickness, containing a skeleton, bronze and flint spear heads, arrow heads of flint and other articles, was found in a tumulus here in 1834, and is now in the Scarborough museum; the skeleton is believed to be that of some early chieftain of high standing: two other tumuli on the cliff contained only fragments of bone and urns. Mrs. Beswick Myers Beswick is lady of the manor and principal landowner. The soil is heavy loam; subsoil, clay. The crops are wheat, oats and barley and some land in pasture. The area is 1,206 acres of land and 76 of foreshore; rateable value, £1,953; the population in 1911 was 208. This parish is included in the ecclesiastical parish of Filey.

Public Elementary school (infants’); average attendance, 15. The elder children of this place attend the school at Filey.