Whitby Abbey

June 2009

It was at a Bed and Breakfast in Whitby that Bram Stoker wrote his famous Dracula, so it is not surprising that Dracula ended up shipwrecked on the cliffs of Whitby during a storm and then, in the shape of a dog, climbed the 199 steps to St. Mary's Church and graveyard where he claimed his first English victim. (and I thought I'd have to wait till I got to Transylvania next summer to meet up with Dracula).   A.S. Byatt also brought the contemporary novel Possession to this site.  J.M.W. Turner and other painters of the Romantic era were likewise entranced by Whitby's mystic ruins above the misty sea coast.

The haunting ruins are those of a Benedictine Abbey that was founded by the Normans, shortly after the invasion of William the Conqueror, and rebuilt in Gothic style. While it became a wealthy and important monastery until being dissolved by Henry VIII, the site's real glory was from an earlier era. The Venerable Bede, England's first historian, wrote in 731 of the importance of the Anglo-Saxon abbey in Whitby (Streanaeshalch) in the conversion of England to Christianity.

The history of the abbey began in 657 when King Oswy of Northumbria designated Lady Hild as the abbess to lead a mixed monastery of men and women. Hild and the subsequent women who ably led the abbey were of royal birth, and the importance of the monastery increased as it held sacred relics from King Oswy and the defeated King Edwin. The early English poet Caedmon served under Hild. The structures of this early abbey were unfortunately destroyed during Viking raids around 867. A German naval bombardment in WWI added to the disrepair of the current ruins. The site has an audio tour and interactive museum well worth the time. Alas, I did not leave enough time for shopping before the unique gift shop closed!
Click link below for slide show:
Whitby Abbey
Music: Annonymous 4, The Origin of Fire: Music and Visions of Hildegard von Bingen
Additional information:  www.whitbyabbey.co.uk