George Alderson Smith was born in Leeds on 6 March 1834, he was the second son of John Smith, a banker, and Ann Catherine Jane Metcalfe. On leaving school he was articled to be a solicitor’s clerk, and eventually, briefly, going into partnership with JA Ikin an attorneys and solicitors practice in Leeds; but by 1859 the partnership was dissolved, and George turned to manufacturing worsted goods.
On 1 August 1860 he married Helen Alder, at Christ Church, in Hull, she was the daughter of John Alder, a corn merchant and Mary. Sadly, Helen died giving birth to their sixth child, Alder on 23 October 1870. By 1879 George had retired to Scarborough and against many people’s advice he had Wheatcroft Cliff built on the cliff top off what is now Holbeck Gardens. His retirement was not unproductive however, as over the next few years he became involved with the Grand Hotel Company, became chairman of the South Cliff Tramway Company and a director of Scarborough Spa Company, he also became a JP and Deputy Lieutenant for the North Riding of Yorkshire.
In addition, he built a fleet of steam trawlers, it has been said that at one time he owned the largest fleet of steam trawlers in the country. In the 1890’s a different way of trawling was being tried out on the relatively new screw steam trawlers, one of the pioneers of this form of trawling was Tom Normandale, Skipper on Alderson Smith’s steam trawler the Otter. The boards used to keep the trawl nets open became known as Otter Boards, after the name of the boat they were first used on.
n 1900 George remarried to Eleanor Marianne Eden Cookson at Skipton, she was the daughter of William Cookson, a retired Army Major and Eleanor Ann, and they had a daughter in 1904. By WW1 his fishing fleet had been reduced to just three trawlers, the Seal, the Otter and the Dalhousie.
ST Dalhousie had been built in 1886 and on 13 July 1916 it was captured by a German submarine, and sunk by a bomb being placed below decks, ten miles from Whitby, all the crew survived.
On the evening of 24 - 25 September 1916 nineteen trawlers were sunk by a U boat also ten miles off Whitby, two of the sunken boats belonged to Alderton Smith, the Otter SH70 and the Seal SH126.
George died at Wheatcroft Cliff on 31 January 1931, aged 96. His birth surname was Smith with George Alderson being his forenames, in official registers his surname varies between Alderson-Smith and Smith, all his children had Alderson-Smith as their surname.
George’s children with Helen Alder were:
Ethel Alderson-Smith (1863 – 1932) Married Sir Henry Clark King
Helen Maude Alderson-Smith (1866 -1955) Married Ernest Dade, Artist
Hilda Alderson-Smith (1867 – 1962) Married Francis Dewsbury, Registrar at Madras
Katherine Lillian Alderson-Smith (1868 – 1935) Married William Wailes-Fairbairn, Gentleman Farmer
Herbert Alderson-Smith (1869 – 1895) Lieutenant Yorkshire Regiment, killed in Cairo,
Alder Alderson-Smith (1870 – 1911) Lieutenant in Army - Married Grace Mary Howard
George’s child with Eleanor Cookson:
Eleanor Frances Alderson-Smith (1903)
After George Alderson Smith’s death Wheatcroft Cliff was sold to the Laughton family (The acter Charles Laughton was part of this family) who owned a number of high class hotels in Scarborough, a few being the Victoria, Pavilion and Royal, they renamed the house Holbeck Hall. In WW2 it was closed and towards the end of the war it was used as a resettlement home for returning prisoners of war. After the war it was sold by the Laughton’s and changed hands a number of times until it was acquired by the English Rose group of hotels in 1988.
In June 1993 cracks started to appear in the ground of the gardens and on the morning of the 4th the guests woke up to find the lawn and garden in front of the hotel had slipped down the cliffs, an immediate evacuation of the hotel was ordered, without belongings being allowed to be retrieved. Soon after that parts of the building began to crumble and slipped down the cliff. By the weekend there wasn’t much of the building left and the remaining bits still standing were bulldozed to the ground.
Visit :-
Holbeck Hill Car Park - Site of Holbeck Hall Landslip
Holbeck Garden Fountains, dedicated to Herbert Alderson-Smith who was killed in Cairo, Egypt
