Whitby

Whitby is famous for having the first English poet called Caedmon. He lived here at the time of St. Hilda. She built the Abbey here, which is now in ruins. Recently they've found about 200 saxon graves just outside the Abbey grounds.

Whitby is also famous for a few other things as well. The date for Easter was set here by the Synod of Whitby at the time of St. Hilda. Captain William Scoreby, a whaling captain, invented the crows nest on sailing ships...there is a monument to him here, it looks like a wooden barrel strapped to a mast.

Also, a very famous explorer lived here, although he was born at Marton near Middleborough, his name was Captain James Cook and he made three voyages of discovery. His most famous ship, the Endeavour, was a Whitby cat, a flat bottom sailing ship as was the Discovery and Resolution. They built them flat bottomed so that they could run them ashore so they could unload the coal and cargo onto the beach at low tide.

If you're interested in Dracula, in Brahm Stoker's novel, Dracula's ship ran aground on the beach in the harbour, the biggest one of the two, and Dracula ran off as a black dog up the 199 steps.

Whitby is a small fishing port and in its heyday sailing ships used to leave here for the whaling grounds, and Scottish fishing fleets used to fish for herring. They used to say the harbor was that full of fishing boats that you could cross the harbour by just walking across the boats.

Whitby from the air and the edge of the
North Yorks National Park

The river is called the river Esk, it is the only salmon river in Yorkshire. Beyond is the Moors; heather, woodland, nice for walks and peace and quiet, and some lovely places to visit. Goathland is one where you can catch a steam train and travel along the Esk valley. Goathland is the place where they film the tv series Heartbeat. If you like walking, you can walk across the Moors, but be careful because the weather can soon change, so go prepared.

Ruins of Whitby Abbey

The ruins of Whitby Abbey is one of my neighbours, nice and peaceful to walk around and run by English Hertiage is at the top of the 199 steps. Below the Abbey is St. Mary's Church at the top of the steps.
At the side is a cobbled footpath called the donkey path. On the steps are resting places where they used to stop and rest when they were taking people up to St. Mary's Church for burial.

St. Mary's is an interesting church, and Dracula is supposed to be buried there, but we could never find his grave when we were kids because he was always moving about. hahaha!!.

If you look closely at some of the graves you will find some marked with skull and cross bones.



If you have any questions, click on this button... feel free to email me anytime

To let me know you were here, or if you want to see who has visited this site, click on either of the buttons below.

back to the top of the page