THE seaside's not just for summer. Few would make Scarborough their first choice January destination, but you don't need to brave the beach to enjoy a day out in the town. There is plenty of interest in the ancient streets to warm the cockles of any history buff.

Your tour will be much more edifying if you take along a warm coat and a copy of A Guide To Historic Scarborough.

The guide was published last month by the Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society. It is part of a two-year project funded by the Lottery to "enhance knowledge and enjoyment of Scarborough's heritage".

With plenty of pictures and a brisk, informed and readable text, the book is very user-friendly, taking both a chronological and themed approach to the resort's fluctuating fortunes.

The resort exists because of the sheltered bay which provides easy access for shipping.

What really put it on the map was the castle, however. Begun by Henry II in around 1155, it sits on a hill top most likely fortified first in the Iron Age, more than a millennium earlier. Other sovereigns added to Henry's work, and eventually Scarborough Castle became one of the most powerful royal fortresses in the North.

This was not Scarborough's only defence by any means. Newborough Bar also dates from the 12th century. In the medieval period there was a wide ditch in front crossed by a drawbridge. For centuries, it also served as the town's prison.

The bar was practical rather than beautiful. "It was a rather squat, ugly building with a single arched opening and a line of battlements on top, not at all like the elegant turreted gates still to be seen at York," the authors comment.

The last time Scarborough's medieval defences were prepared for war was in 1745 when it was feared that Bonnie Prince Charlie's Scottish forces were about to attack. In the event, the army chose a different route.

So the resort was utterly unprepared when it was next attacked - by the Germans without warning in the First World War. The navy shelled the resort for half an hour on December 16, 1914, killing 17 people and injuring more than 80 others.

Scarborough's trade is covered in some detail in the guide. The town, of course, was built on fish. Its herring trade made it one of the richest places in England in the Middle Ages, and fish were bought and sold on the sands for 45 days each year at the original Scarborough Fair.

The way they were caught and preserved hardly changed for hundreds of years.

"Herring were harvested off Scarborough during the late summer and early autumn months and, once caught, they needed to be preserved," the book recounts.

"During the 12th century, these fish had only enough salt sprinkled on them to prepare them for immediate sale; by the 14th century, the practice was to gut and salt them and sprinkle extra salt between the layers of fish, and then pack them head-to-tail into tightly-sealed barrels.

"This was more or less the method used until the middle of the 20th century by the herring fleets and their followers, the 'herring girls', whose job it was to gut the fish and prepare them for transport."

Their dexterity with the gipping knife became legendary, and they were often photographed by visitors.

And visitors have been drawn to drop in to Scarborough for nearly 400 years, making it the original seaside resort. The discovery of natural springs under the South Bay cliff in about 1626 brought well-to-do folk seeking the restorative powers of the spa.

Dr Robert Wittie of York promoted Scarborough spa waters as a cure for "melancholic vapours, nightmares, apoplexy, catalepsie, epilepsie, vertigo, nerves, yellow and black jaundice". No wonder more than 1,000 visitors were recorded in Scarborough in 1733, earls and knights among them.

It was the coming of the railway in 1845 which led to the second visitor boom.

New leisure facilities opened in the following decades, including the aquarium, opened in 1877, the expanded Rotunda Museum (1860s) and Catlin's New Arcadia (1909). Modern tourist Scarborough was beginning to emerge.

A Guide To Historic Scarborough by the Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society costs £5

Updated: 09:08 Monday, January 05, 2004