 Whitby Abbey
The cliffs at Whitby had been a popular area for communities to settle from
as long ago as Roman times, but when St Hilda arrived here in AD657
the headland became one of the holiest places in the country. It was
here on these sacred cliffs that a Benedictine house for monks and nuns
was established, and Hilda became the first Anglo-Saxon Abbess at Whitby.
With the Danish invasions of 867, however, the monastery and the whole
community were totally destroyed.
In 1078 the Benedictine priory
was refounded but nothing of the first Norman church has survived, although
excavations have revealed that it was a smaller building than the ruins
portray today, and had an apsidal east end. During the 1220s an ambitious
rebuilding programme of the church began. Its overall length was extended
to some 300ft (90m), and the east end was transformed with the splendour of
Early English architecture. Boasting decorative piers, three levels of
elegant lancet windows, a continuous row of beautifully carved arches,
and high-level blind arcading, the 14th century Whitby Abbey
must have presented a grand spectacle from its commanding position above
the town. Even 650 years later the ruins still demand a lingering look
from any angle. The end wall of the north transept, the northern wall
of the chancel, and one section of the east end have survived to almost
full height, but everything on the south side of the church has virtually
disappeared along with all the domestic buildings usually associated with
a monastery.
Of all the great monastic
houses in Britain, Whitby Abbey was one of the last to be dissolved.
But the end finally came for the Benedictine monks in December 1539.
After the Dissolution the site passed to the Cholmley family and remained
with them for 250 years. During this time they used all the valuable
building materials they could plunder from the ruined abbey to construct
a mansion nearby. Although the abbey church was left relatively intact at
that time, by the end of the 18th century the years of neglect
had taken their toll on the structure. The nave collapsed, followed
by the south transept and a substantial part of the west front, and
then in the 1830s the central tower fell, and the choir was badly damaged
in a storm. Continually battered by the weather in its exposed location,
Whitby Abbey suffered the final insult of being shelled by German cruisers
patrolling the North Sea in 1914.
We have experienced the delights
of this Yorkshire coastal abbey in extreme contrasts of weather - once
on a balmy autumn day with the sun reflecting upon the warm peachy tones
of the ancient stonework, and on another occasion when an Easter blizzard
was bombarding the site with squally snow showers. But nothing detracts
from the determined beauty of Whitby Abbey, a place of peace and sanctity that
Bede found so much to write about in the early 8th century.
It may have changed beyond all recognition in 1300 years, but it still
retains an aura of quiet holiness, with an evocative sense of the past
contained within the standing walls.
As a prominent landmark in
Yorkshire, just imagine how grand and inviting the Whitby Abbey must have looked
in the 14th century, commanding the town from its elevated
position next to the sea. |
