Northern Monument 35

Whitby Abbey, a 7th-century Christian monastery that later became a Benedictine abbey, situated overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire. Once the centre of the medieval Northumbrian kingdom, the Abbey and its possessions were confiscated by the crown under Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1545, and the ruins of the Abbey have continued to be used by sailors as a landmark at the headland ever since. It has also long since the Victorian era been associated with the inspiration for Dracula; Bram Stoker's 1897 novel featured Count Dracula as a creature resembling a large dog which came ashore at the headland and runs up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St Mary's Church in the shadow of the Abbey ruins. The Gothic literature of the time was set in foreign lands full of eerie castles, convents and caves. Whitby’s windswept headland, the dramatic abbey ruins, a church surrounded by swooping bats, and a long association with jet – a semi-precious stone used in mourning jewellery – earnt this spot on the Northern coastline a fitting association with the story.