Whitby Abbey

The first monastery here was founded in 657 by Hild, a double house of monks and nuns, and it hosted the Synod of Whitby in 664, which settled the English church on the Roman rather than the Irish calculation of Easter. Cædmon, the earliest English poet whose name is known, was a herdsman at the abbey. Vikings destroyed it, the Normans refounded it, and what stands is the thirteenth-century church, roofless since the dissolution and further damaged by shelling from the sea in 1914. Bram Stoker holidayed in Whitby in 1890, read about a Russian ship wrecked in the harbour and about the word vampire in the local library, and put Dracula ashore here as a black dog running up the 199 steps to the churchyard, which is why the town holds two goth weekends a year.

What you actually see

• The gothic shell - a thirteenth-century church roofless since the dissolution.
• The 199 steps - the stone stair from the harbour to the headland.
• The Anglo-Saxon site - where the 664 synod fixed the English date of Easter.
• St Mary's churchyard - the burial ground Stoker used in Dracula.

When to go

April to October for full opening and the walk up; the headland is fiercely exposed to wind off the North Sea. Whitby Goth Weekend runs in spring and autumn and fills the town entirely.

Honest expectations

The abbey is a ruin with no roofed interior, and the visitor centre is small. The 199 steps are a real climb and there is no lift, though there is clifftop parking. Wind on the headland is constant and often severe.

Nearby

Whitby harbour and the Captain Cook museum are below; Robin Hood's Bay lies south.