Whitby

I went to visit Whitby, North Yorkshire, this week and, inspired by James’s photos of Burrishoole Abbey at Behind the Couch, I took some photographs of some of Whitby’s iconic sights.

Whitby is, of course, famous as the setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written in 1897. Stoker was taken by the mood of the place after staying there on vacation and it is easy to see why – the imposing abbey which overlooks the quaint seaside town, accessed by 199 steps along the side of the cliff, makes for a unique and atmospheric location. Romantic and brooding, but quite beautiful.

The town has retained much of its Victorian age character, so it is easy to see why it is the meeting place for Goth weekends twice a year, and the setting for the wonderful Bram Stoker Horror Film Festival each October. Strangely enough though, very few adaptations of Stoker’s novel have actually filmed here. In fact the only film adaptation to have used Whitby as an actual location, to my knowledge, is the BBC’s 1977 Louis Jourdan version, which featured a few location shots around St Mary’s Church (which also sits atop the cliff next to the remains of the abbey).

‘T’is a pity, as Stoker used this remarkable location so well; indeed some of Whitby’s features, such as the aforementioned steps and St Mary’s graveyard are an integral part of the novel and its narrative. They are cinematic indeed.

In the novel Dracula comes to Whitby from Transylvania aboard a ship, the Demeter, which crashes in to the rocks on Whitby’s headland.  Dracula escapes the wrecked ship and is sighted as a black dog running up the step to St Mary’s Church. Here, the novel’s heroines, Mina and Lucy, take their daily walks, enjoying the views from the churchyard. When Dracula spies Lucy, she becomes his willing victim…