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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Friday, May 15, 2026

2 comments:

Sarah @ All The Book Blog Names Are Taken said...

I'd love to wander about in these ruins. I bet it's positively spooky at night.

CyberKitten said...

From Wiki: Whitby Abbey was a 7th-century Christian monastery that later became a Benedictine abbey. The abbey church was situated overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire, England, a centre of the medieval Northumbrian kingdom. The abbey and its possessions were confiscated by the crown under Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1545.

Since that time, the ruins of the abbey have continued to be used by sailors as a landmark at the headland. Since the 20th century, the substantial ruins of the church have been declared a Grade I Listed building and are in the care of English Heritage. The site museum is housed in Cholmley House, a 17th-century banqueting hall repurposed by design studio Stanton Williams in 2002.

...and for the especially spooky bit...

Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula featured Count Dracula as a creature resembling a large dog which came ashore at the headland and ran up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St Mary's Church in the shadow of the Whitby Abbey ruins. The abbey is also described in Mina Harker's diary in the novel.

I visited the site with my ex some years ago. It's a VERY impressive ruin.