Whitby Abbey: History and Stories

A short aerial look at Whitby Abbey - a landmark that basically runs the whole skyline. The first monastery here was founded in 657 by St Hilda, and the Synod of Whitby was held here in 664 - one of those moments that shaped how the English church developed. The abbey we see as ruins now is later: a big Benedictine rebuild after the Norman Conquest, with the great Gothic church rising in the 13th century. Then came the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, when it was closed and stripped, leav