The anticline was thought to have stretched for approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) in a north–south direction underneath the mouth of the River Esk in Whitby, with a depth of 200 feet (61 m).

[7] The fault displaces the Upper Lias Shales below sea level at the West Cliff, but they rise up again in the vicinity of Sandsend.

[2] Henry attests to the gorge that the river now flows through at Larpool in Whitby to the blocking of the pre-glacial channel by boulder clay.

[11] In his book, A geological survey of the Yorkshire coast, George Young estimates that "...we can scarcely reckon the amount of the slip less than 100 feet..."[12] That a fault exists is widely accepted, but in the 20th century, J. E. Hemingway consulted paleobotanical and structural evidence to refute the claims that the cliffs were formed at different times.

[14] In 1924, before the revised theory regarding the fault came out, both Kendall and Wroot state that the British Geological Survey estimated the depth as 200 feet (61 m).