The Ham Nomads

20 Aug 2014. <GB-ENG> Whitby, & East Harlsey, N Yorks —

Today was a fine day, with some patches of full sunshine, some of light overcast. We went in to Whitby, and up to the abbey. What is now on the headland above the city are the remains of a 12th century Benedictine abbey, but the site has a very important earlier history. There was an important monastery founded in Streaneshalch (the Anglo-Saxon name of the city renamed Whitby by the Danes in the 9th century) in AD657 by St Hild, with the support of King Oswiu of Northumbria.

In 664 the abbey was the site of what is now known as the Great Synod of Whitby, where the discrepancy in the calculation of the date of Easter between the Celtic and the Roman traditions, was resolved — in the favour of Rome.

One of Abbess Hild's claims to fame was that she recognised the miraculous gift of a lowly uneducated herdsman who, having no talent for poetry or music, was told in a dream to sing. He said "I do not know what to sing", and he was told "Sing of Creation". The following morning, Cædmon came up with what is now known as Cædmon's Hymn, the first of many poems by the first named poet in the English language.

Although Warren learned Cædmon's Hymn in the West Saxon dialect usually studied by Old English scholars, here it is in the original Northumbrian dialect of Cædmon himself:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur, sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci dryctin, or astelidæ.

He aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe, haleg scepen;
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard,
eci dryctin, æfter tiadæ
firum foldu, frea allmectig.

Now we shall praise the keeper of the heavenly kingdom,
the power of the lord of destiny and his imagination,
the deeds of the glorious father, when of every glorious thing
he, the eternal lord, ordained the beginning.

He first shaped for the children of earth
the heaven as a roof, the holy creator;
then mankind's guardian, the eternal lord,
afterwards made middle-earth;
the almighty lord made land for living things.

Another eminent person from the early days of the abbey is the Venerable Bede (673-735), the writer of An Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede was about 7 when Cædmon died, in the same town, so their lives could well have intersected. Bede's History was later translated under Alfred from Latin into Old English.

But enough of the lecture! Let's say we had a wonderful time just taking in the long story of such an important place in early English history. We then went down into the town, which was a little more crowded than usual as the Whitby Folk Festival was in full swing. The quaint medieval streets were buzzing!

We took the opportunity to go for a short boat ride in one of their old decommissioned lifeboats, a short way up the River Esk and then out to the harbour mouth and back again. The helmsman was quite a character — more pirate than anything else, and he spent much of the trip chatting up two of the girls who had come on board. On the way we passed a scaled-down replica of James Cook's Endeavour — after all, it was here Cook served his apprenticeship as a seaman, and it was here that his Endeavour was built!

We then went back to the van and drove out towards York. Because the road out through Scarbourough involved a steep uphill slope that Gertie might have difficulty with, we opted to go in the other direction, skirting the Moors on the north side before turning back towards York. This took us past the Mount Grace Priory, a National Trust / English Heritage site.

It was originally a Carthusian charterhouse, and then was taken over on the dissolution of the monasteries, by Thomas Lascelles in 1654, who built a manor house in the ruins of the monastery, but who left parts of it intact as his family were buried in its central church. In 1900 the manor was substantially refitted by Sir Lowthian Bell in the Arts and Crafts style of the time, and this is much the way we see it today. The garden outside in the front has been redeveloped in the Arts and Crafts style over the last 25 years by English Heritage, and it is really exquisite.

The ruins of the priory, behind the manor, are fascinating. The Carthusians were an order of hermits, each monk having his own cell, living in total isolation but for the community church services — Matins (11pm), High Mass (7am), and Vespers (2.45pm). There is one cell that has been reconstructed (in the 1800s!), and now furnished by English Heritage. If by 'cell' you have the impression of something like a prison cell, you are on the wrong track. Each monk's cell was an enclosed 2-story cottage, with entry passage, a hall or living-room with a fireplace, a study and a bedroom and oratory, as well as an upper-floor workroom.

There was an enclosed garden area, which had a walkway round it forming a private cloister. There was even an enclosed walkway, with windows to the garden, that could be used instead of the cloister in inclement weather. Meals were delivered to the cell via a hatchway, and the cell could be barred from the inside — not a bad life for a recluse!

We wandered the manor, we wandered the priory, we wandered the gardens. Beautiful, quiet, relaxing. Then we left, and drove towards York for tomorrow. We were about 45 minutes short of York when Susie spied a good layby, so we pulled in for the night.

Distance driven — today, 51 miles ( 82 km ); to date, 6,170 miles ( 9,930 km )