The SUGGIT window in St Oswald’s Church, Filey, is dedicated to Thomas Suggit, his wife Zillah née AGAR, and their son Thomas Henry. (You can see a photograph of the complete window on Geograph.)

Young Thomas had three older sisters, Zillah Agar,  Jane, and Harriet. One of them had an aquarium and 155 years ago the lad went onto Filey Brigg to get “some objects” to put in it. His 15^th birthday was approaching – and he was about to leave Filey to study civil engineering.

He seems to have been remarkably diligent in his search for things animal, vegetable, and mineral that would enhance the aquarium. He left the house at 11 in the morning and, without distractions, he would have reached the end of the Brigg within thirty minutes. Circumstantial evidence suggests his life ended at 3.30 pm and his body was discovered half an hour after that.

This account says nothing about the tide. He would only have had to ascend the cliffs if the waves had blocked the path at Agony Point.  The description of the cliff as “sloping” suggests he was scrambling up the south side of Carr Naze but if that was the case his perpendicular fall to the rocks would have been about ten feet, not forty.  Fishermen now climb up and down the cliffs at the Back o’ the Brigg all the time with the aid of a ladder or two but, whether or not these aids existed in 1862, it wasn’t sensible for the encumbered boy to make his way home that way.

After a dull start, this morning turned bright and breezy and this was the view from Wool Dale Cliffs. Brigg Corner is bottom right and Agony Point is about halfway to the end of Carr Naze. Beyond Agony Point the cliffs slope fairly gently and are covered in vegetation. Climbing them would not be considered dangerous or foolhardy, then or now.

Nobody witnessed his fall and the ending of his “great promise”.

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