Famous Guests and visiting Chefs

Charles Dickens

In a letter written to Wilkie Collins, a good friend and Whitby Resident in 1861, Dickens wrote about the White Horse and Griffin:

“In my time that curious railroad by the Whitby Moor was so much the more curious, that you were balanced against a counter-weight of water, and that you did it like Blondin. But in these remote days the one inn of Whitby was up a back-yard, and oyster-shell grottoes were the only view from the best private room.”

Dickens was speaking of the ‘North Yorkshire Moors Railway’ and his feelings of unease by referencing the well known French tightrope walker and acrobat called Charles Blondin. Local Historians believe that the Dickens is in fact referring to The White Horse and Griffin.

Later this was dramatised by the BBC and filmed in part at The White Horse and Griffin starring

David Hemmings and Simon Callow.

Captain Cook

Between the years of October 1746 to June 1755, Captain Cook made many voyages from Whitby where he studied navigation and all duties involved with sailing ships. It was here that he truly fell in love with the sea and was born his desire to circumnavigate the globe. In HMS Endeavour he charted New Zealand and circumnavigated the globe from east to west and then a second voyage saw him circumnavigate the globe from west to east in HMS Resolution.

Captain Cook recruited his sailors for these voyages from The White Horse and Griffin restaurant and bar and often stayed in the same rooms of which our guests stay now.