Whitby Abbey

Perched high on a cliff above the town, Whitby Abbey is one of the most striking and well-known landmarks in North Yorkshire.

The first monastery here was founded in about 657. It became one of the most important religious centres in the Anglo-Saxon world. The headland is now dominated by the shell of the 13th-century church of a Benedictine abbey founded after the Norman Conquest.

The ruin is also famous as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s novel ‘Dracula’.