Town in North Yorkshire, England
Whitby
Dracula washed ashore here, Captain Cook learned his trade here, and England's first named poet herded cows here.
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Key information
- County
- North Yorkshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 13,200 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Whitby Abbey, Dracula, Captain Cook, jet jewellery, kippers and fish and chips
- Famous people
- Captain James Cook (apprenticed here), William Scoresby, Caedmon, St Hilda
- Football clubs
- Whitby Town (the Seasiders), FA Vase winners in 1997
About Whitby
The cowherd who started English poetry
Long before Whitby had a single fish and chip shop, it had a poet. Caedmon, a cowherd at the abbey in the 7th century, is the earliest English poet known by name. The story goes that he fled a feast rather than sing, then dreamed a stranger told him to sing about creation. He woke with the verses ready. The abbey was founded in 657 under the formidable St Hilda, and it hosted the Synod of Whitby in 664, where the English church settled how to calculate Easter and tied itself to Rome. Not bad for a clifftop above a small harbour. The ruins you see today are mostly 13th-century Gothic, a skeleton of tall arches against the sky. They took a beating in December 1914, when German warships shelled Whitby, and the abbey was hit. The ruins still stand on the East Cliff. The town's coat of arms carries ammonites, those coiled fossils that litter the local cliffs. Legend says St Hilda turned a plague of snakes to stone and flung them over the edge.
Why Dracula chose Whitby
Bram Stoker stayed in Whitby in 1890, and the town got into his bloodstream. In Dracula (1897), the Count arrives on the Russian schooner Demeter, which smashes ashore in a storm with its crew dead. The Count then bounds up the 199 steps in the shape of a huge black dog. Those steps are real, and so is the churchyard of St Mary's at the top, with its weathered gravestones and its view over the red roofs. Stoker's characters sit on a clifftop seat there, and visitors have been looking for that seat ever since. The link has turned Whitby into a pilgrimage site for the black-clad. The Whitby Goth Weekend has run since 1994, and for a few days the streets fill with top hats, corsets and lace parasols. Locals, by most accounts, are delighted. The town also has an annual Folk Week in August, which makes for a very different but equally colourful crowd.
The Quaker's apprentice who mapped the Pacific
James Cook arrived in Whitby in 1746 to work for John Walker, a Quaker shipowner. Walker's house in Grape Lane is now a museum, and the attic where his apprentices slept is part of it. Whitby built tough, flat-bottomed colliers that could carry coal, and could sit on a beach at low tide without falling over. Cook knew those ships inside out, and when the Royal Navy sent him exploring, he chose them. Endeavour was built in Whitby in 1764, and most of his other great ships were Whitby-built as well. A statue of Cook stands on the West Cliff, looking over the harbour. Nearby, a great arch of whale jawbones is a reminder that the town was also a whaling port from 1753 to 1837. William Scoresby, a local whaling captain, is credited with inventing the crow's nest.
Jet, kippers and the perfect chippy
Whitby's cliffs yield jet, a black gem formed from fossilised wood of trees related to the monkey puzzle. When Queen Victoria went into deep mourning for Prince Albert from 1861, jet became the fashionable stone of grief, and Whitby's workshops boomed. You can still buy it in the shops on the old town's narrow lanes. Then there's food. Whitby is a fish and chip town through and through, and the queues outside its famous chippies can stretch round the corner on a summer afternoon. Whitby scampi, breaded whole tails of langoustine, is a local speciality. Fortune's smokehouse on Henrietta Street has been smoking kippers over oak sawdust since 1872, and the smell still drifts through the old town. Fishermen still land crab, lobster and haddock at the harbour, though the fleet is smaller than it once was.
A hedge in the mud and a team called the Seasiders
Every year on Ascension Eve, the Penny Hedge is planted in the shallows of the Esk. According to tradition, it began in 1159 as a penance for a group of hunters who killed a hermit, and the hedge must be woven from stakes strong enough to withstand three tides. It is one of the oldest ceremonies in England still performed today. In August the Whitby Regatta fills the harbour with rowing races and the town with fairground noise. The swing bridge opens to let boats through, and the town stops to watch. On the football pitch, Whitby Town, known as the Seasiders, were founded in 1880. In 1997 they won the FA Vase at Wembley, a proud day for a small town. They play at the Turnbull Ground, a short walk from the sea. The Cleveland Way runs along the cliffs close by, so the town is a favourite finishing line for walkers, who tend to head straight for the chippy.
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