31/10/2026
The localised flooding after the recent heavy rain in Scarborough was a reminder that the urban area of Scarborough was once crossed by a number of streams, now hidden underground. One of the more important was The Damyot - a hidden stream beneath your feet…
Apart from local wells, an important source of water for the medieval town was the stream called the Damyot (sometimes referred to as the Damgeth), which rose in Albemarle Crescent and flowed into the sea near the Lifeboat House. The course of the stream is shown in blue on the attached map.
It supplied water for both domestic and industrial uses. In one of a our excavations carried out between 1996 and 1998, we discovered a stone-lined portion of the Damyot’s course to the east of Springfield (see link to the report below). This may be the location of the mill operated by Reginald the Miller in the thirteenth century.
We know from historical records that Reginald granted land on either side of the Damyot near the cemetery of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to ‘the Commonality of Scardburgh, to support the Friars dwelling and serving God there’. Although the stream has run underground in a culvert probably since the early nineteenth century, it has on occasion suddenly reappeared after times of heavy rainfall, most recently in August 2002.
On 6 August 1857 it emerged and:
“…rushed in torrents into Aberdeen Walk ... choked up the Gullies in Queen’s Street near Mrs Milson’s Castle Hotel, thence under the archway, knocked down a garden wall on the premises, drowning and washing away a number of her pigs ...”
The Damyot, which was a convenient place for medieval people to throw rubbish, soon became polluted. The stream and the wells, in any case, were unable to meet the needs of a growing town. We will look at what happened next in our post tomorrow…
You can access the report on our Springfield excavations on the Archaeology Data Service by following this link and following the “Download” links (A two part report):
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1120863&recordType=GreyLitSeries
(Map Copyright Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society)
