Richard Whiteley
is famous for hosting the television show Countdown
for 23 years but he was a reporter once. Once he was doing a piece-to-camera on
live television when the chimney stack of The Holbeck
Hall Hotel collapsed. More of the hotel soon followed so while in Scarborough I
thought I’d stand on the hill where the debris flowed down toward the sea.
The building was a private house with cliff-top
views when it was built in 1879 however it was converted to The Holbeck Hall Hotel when English Rose Hotels bought it. On
3rd June 1993 soil below the building started turning into sludge and on 5th
June 1993 (after a day of rain) large parts of the building started flowing
down to the sea. The soil beneath the hotel turned to sludge. Though sections of
the cliffs between Filey and Whitby are known to crumble
the collapsing hotel made news around the world. What remained was demolished
later on for safety reasons. About protruded 100 metres of sludge pushed
larva-like out into the sea.
In 1997 a bitter court case ensued between Holbeck Hall Hotel Ltd and Scarborough Borough Council, the
former wanting buckets of cash for negligence. However the latter won as it not
liable for the causes of the slip itself due to the fact it was not reasonably
foreseeable.
Bit of footage here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rFH1ZFM40Y
I’m
glad the debris didn’t reach down here…