[3] Goathland village is 486 feet (148 m) above sea level and has a recorded history dating back to just after the Norman Conquest, though the settlement was not mentioned in the Domesday Book.

[6] In 1109 King Henry I granted land to Osmund the Priest and the brethren of the hermitage of Goathland, then called Godelandia, for the soul of his mother, Queen Matilda, who had died in 1083.

The Duchy's tenants have a common right extending for hundreds of years to graze their black faced sheep on the village green and surrounding moorland.

At that time, dressed stone was quarried locally and was in short supply, this being 15 years before the railway arrived in the village.

[12] The war memorial, made from sandstone and modelled on the nearby Lilla Cross, is located on the village green.

The station, Goathland Bank Top, was located in the village, and the carriages were drawn up the incline by the use of a rope-worked drum system.

[21] The village is 1.2 miles (2 km) west of the A169 road, and is served by four buses a day as part of the Yorkshire Coastliner service between Leeds and Whitby.

[26] As well as serving as the location for the fictional village of Aidensfield, Goathland features in its own right as the setting for the denouement of Dan Chapman's 2014 dystopian thriller Closed Circuit.

It is explained that the antagonist owns the entire village and the nearby MoD site serves as a base for his operations.

Malcolm Saville's children's novel Mystery Mine[28] is set in an area south-west of Whitby on the north-east Yorkshire moors close to and around a village called Goathland.