The Vintage Views column with Aled Jones - cobles in full sail and a magnificent paddle ship

Painted in watercolours by an expert artist it depicts a wide variety of craft outside the harbour mouth.

Apparently the artist has created the painting while on a ship that was moored in the bay.

A step back in time to the Victorian era – cobles in full sail and a magnificent paddle ship that could only be the PS United Kingdom.

A legend in her own time, a trip from Bridlington to Scarborough on her cost 2s 6d (12.5p), a fair sum of money in those days. However, the price included an ‘excellent quadrille band’ on deck.

Bridlington must have been awesome in 1860 – public rooms, ballroom dancing, theatres, public baths and particularly a commercial district. A newly formed Free Press – great hotels – an esplanade and a host of pubs, were additional services in the town.

Moreover, with the introduction of the railway in 1846, hundreds could travel here every day, and so the town and environs became a popular Spa resort.

Bridlington in 1860 was one of the greatest ‘Watering-places of England’, where people came to drink the iron-rich waters of a chalybeate spring ‘of remarkable purity’ discovered in 1811. Think of Cheltenham by the sea!

Taking the waters were so popular at Bridlington that The Illustrated London News featured the resort in its famous columns, describing it as having ‘risen from a humble village to the rank of a town numbering above 3,000 inhabitants.’

The eloquently written article, published on October 20, 1849, curiously refers to a Polytechnic Rooms building, adjoining the North Pier.

This can only be a reference to the Victoria Rooms, Bridlington’s prime social and cultural hub, 1847-1932 – clearly featured in the middle of the image.

Ostensibly a seat of learning, too, it’s possible the Victoria Rooms may have functioned in our modern sense of the word ‘polytechnic’, complete with student digs.

The building was described by the same paper as containing ‘an upper and lower Promenade Room, News, Billiard, and Exhibition Rooms, with promenade on the roof and prospect tower’.

The paper continues ‘The Exhibition Rooms have this year been graced by a small but excellent collection of paintings in landscape, figure and composition…’

These spacious, well-lit Exhibition Rooms were presumably used as the main student lecture theatres and classrooms. It’s no coincidence that Victorian students were known as Exhibitioners.

To the right of the Victoria Rooms, perched high on the Esplanade, is Bishop’s Improved Baths. They were built in 1844 and offered ‘all the modern improvements’, with separate suites for both men and women.

The tall spire of Christ Church looms beautifully in the left distance. Built of gleaming limestone in 1859, it must have sparkled in the afternoon sun.

Duke’s Mill, Bempton Lane, can clearly be seen in the right distance. It was built in 1823 by Moses Dukes and remained in use until the early 20th Century.

Interestingly, the windmill was one of the few in the town not to be situated along the Gypsey Race, the ancient chalk-stream that empties into the harbour.