Whitby Abbey
Whitby Abbey (translated: Whitby Abbey ) is a former monastery in Whitby , a historic port town on the North Sea coast of Yorkshire County in England. The ruin has been listed as a Grade I structure on the National Heritage List for England since 1954 .
history
Whitby Abbey was founded in 657 AD by King Oswiu of Northumbria as a double monastery for men and women and was initially named Streoneshalch. Even under the monastery's first abbess, the later canonized Hilda , Whitby Abbey became famous for its educational system and close relationship with the royal family in Northumbria . The Whitby Synod was held here in AD 664 . Hilda was a follower of Celtic customs, but after the synod she also introduced the Roman rite and the Roman Easter date in her monastery .
After the Abbess's death in 680, the history of Whitby Abbey has been in the dark for 200 years. In 867 the abbey was destroyed in a Danish invasion, the name Streoneshalch disappeared and was replaced by Whitby .
It was not until around 1077 that Reinfried, who had belonged to the invading army under William the Conqueror , founded a new Benedictine monastery. Approx. Construction began in 1220; the abbey was rebuilt a little more south than the previous building. Despite its former importance and architectural splendor, Whitby no longer played a special role. During the English Reformation in the 16th century under Henry VIII , the monastery was dissolved and the building left to decay. After the nave collapsed in 1763 and the crossing tower in 1830 , the west facade was destroyed by shell hits from German battlecruisers during the raids on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby during the First World War . In 1921, however, the facade was reconstructed true to the original. Of the church, the choir, the transepts, partly the north aisle of the nave and the aforementioned west facade still stand.
Personalities of Whitby Convent
Cædmon was a monk in Whitby and is said to have been entrusted with the herding of Hilda's pigs. His poem Song of Creation is the oldest poem in English. A cross about 6 m high in front of St. Mary's Church in Whitby reminds of him.
The ruin
Most of the ruins that can be seen today date from the 13th / 14th centuries. Century, the early Gothic Early English style (12th – 13th centuries) predominates . However, some windows are in the High Gothic Decorated style (13th / 14th centuries), others in the late Gothic Perpendicular style (14th - 16th centuries). The building has a total length of 91 meters. There is a bend in the main axis between the nave and the choir .
literature
- R. Dobson: Whitby. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Vol. 9, Artemis, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89659-909-7 , Sp. 54-55.
- Franz Mehling (Hrsg.): Knaur's cultural guide in color - Great Britain and Ireland. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-426-26094-8 .
- Nikolaus Pevsner: Yorkshire. The North Riding. Penguin, London 1992, ISBN 0-14-071029-9 .
Web links
- Entry of the ruin as a Grade I building at Historic England
- Whitby Abbey - Information for Teachers. (English) (PDF file; 20.9 MB) at www.english-heritage.org.uk
Coordinates: 54 ° 29 ′ 17.8 " N , 0 ° 36 ′ 26.8" W.