The Abbey ruin we see now is not the first religious building on this site. In the 7th and 8th centuries the headland it stands on was known as Streaneshalch and was the site of an Anglian settlement and Minster church established in the 5th and 6th centuries by the peoples who had settled on this side of Britain - the Angli or Anglians.
The Minster was founded some time after the battle of Winwaed in 655 when the forces of Oswiu of Northumberland beat the pagan forces of Penda of Mercia. Oswiu married King Edwin's daughter Eanflaed. Oswiu gave his infant daughter Aelfflaed into the care of Hild the Abbess of Hartlepool. In 657 Hild founded a new Minster for both men and women at Whitby. It is assumed that the first settlement and minster was destroyed sometime in the 10th century by Viking raiders who burned and sacked many of the Christian establishments along the North East coast. The name of Streaneshalch all but disappeared from the records and the Danish name of Whitby appeared.
The building below was the home of the Cholmley family who leased the site of the abbey after the suppression or dissolution of Whitby Abbey in 1539. At this time Henry Davell was the last abbot of the abbey and at the time it was handed over to King Henry VIII's commissioners there were twenty two members of the community and the estates were worth £437 2s 9d. Whitby was one of the poorest Benedictine Monasteries in England.
It's such an old and well positioned site for an Abbey and has seen so many changes over all those years. You must have had a steep climb to get there. 😊
ReplyDeleteThank you CK. We actually parked on the headland, there is a huge car park beyond the boundary wall. There are two sets of steps down into the town, the old steep ones - the 199 steps to the church and some less steep ones which we used to go down into the town, coming back up wasn't as hard on those:)
DeleteThank you for sharing the history of Whitby Abbey and for the beautiful photos.
ReplyDeleteThank you Beverley, glad you enjoyed the history and photos:)
DeleteThanks so much for the photos and information on Whitby Abbey - it is a place I would love to visit.
ReplyDeleteThank you Caroline, there is so much there and the church is fascinating too. It still has the 18th century box pews, gallery and three tier pulpit, there is a feeling of sadness in there. It's the second time I've been in the church but the first time I'd been into the Abbey:)
DeleteWhitby Abbey's walls have seen so much history. It's amazing, truly, to think of the span of years when here where I live, written history extends back maybe 300 years.
ReplyDeleteThank you Lorrie, it is an amazing place and as you say the walls and in fact the whole headland have so much history. What stories they could tell:)
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