Whitby is famous for?
Whitby (St Hilda's) Abbey, Dracula, Bram Stoker, Captain Cook, Whitby Goths, Whitby Regatta, Whitby Whaling, Fishing, St Mary's Church, Whitby Jet, Whitby Witches, Whitby Town, The Whitby Seagull, 199 Steps, Harbour, Whitby Piers, Shipping Trades, Alum Production, B&Bs, The East Cliff, Captain William Scoresby, Fisherman's Cottages, Whitby's Yards, Steps and cobbled streets, Fish and Chips, The Endeavour, Ghost Walks, Sea Food, Seaside, The West Cliff, Whitby Folk Festival, Caedmon, Frank Sutcliffe, Whitby Kippers, Lobster, Crabs and Scampi, Synod of A.D. 664, Australian 'First Fleet' supply vessels,
Do you know any other things Whitby is famous for? Let us know and we'll add it to the list, see here!
Discover Whitby's street names and their history here
Break the ice, Jury, Binge drinking, Incredible Hulk, Down the hatch, ...discover these and many more well known phrases from our maritime past here
Find out about the building styles and architecture found in the buildings of Whitby here.
Whitby in times gone by, ads from the past here
Middle Jurassic
The episode in our planet's history dubbed by geologists the Lower Jurassic came to a close a little under 188 million years ago when a series of relatively gentle tectonic movements gradually uplifted the floor of the Tethys Sea. The Earth's crust (locally) was distorted into a complex surface of minor basins and domes standing close to sea-level. This transition between marine and non-marine environments endured for several million years.
Where Whitby stands today, the ancient sea-floor was initially uplifted above sea-level and exposed to the elements, whereupon the youngest shales of the Whitby Mudstone Formation were eroded away. Next, the
Tethys made a final attempt to reclaim the territory and inundated the land again, but to no avail. The outcome of this battle between land and sea is recorded in the cliff face around ten metres above scar level near the East Pier slipway (see photograph of East Cliff). Here, a bed of hard iron-rich marine sandstone, c.70cms in thickness, can be easily identified and traced for some distance toward nearby Saltwick Bay.
This seemingly innocuous bed is the local representative of the Dogger Formation and it marks commencement of an episode of alternating marine and river-delta deposits which typify the Middle Jurassic of North East Yorkshire. At Long Bight, almost half-way to Saltwick Bay, the gentle easterly dip of the beds brings the Dogger Formation right down to scar level. Close inspection of its contact with the underlying shale shows a decidedly pebbly base – the result of a period of erosion. Within the sandstone can often be discerned fossilised vertical burrows attributable to marine invertebrates (worms).
The Tethys eventually lost this particular battle however, as river systems draining the low-lying landmass away to the north and west extended their deltas across the newly upraised surface.
The succeeding thirty metres or so of strata forming the East Cliff above the Dogger Formation are a sequence of deltaic sandstone interbedded with siltstone and shale, collectively known as the Saltwick Formation (after Saltwick Bay). River deltas are dynamic environments governed by a shifting network of braided-streams which deposit, and then re-work, the sediments eroded from the land surface. They also include more stable areas helped by the growth of vegetation. Where Whitby today nestles within a cleft in the cliffs, once grew extensive stands of ancient flora including Ginkgo, Araucaria, varieties of tree-fern, Giant Horsetails and a wealth of other primitive plant species.
Heavy storms would occasionally sweep across the landmass swelling the rivers and collecting together rafts of debris that would become stranded on the delta. After burial and lithifaction, the complex process by which soft sediment is transformed into solid rock, the former flotsam produced plant beds and minor seams of coal. One particular fossil specimen recovered from these rocks, Weltrechia whitbiensis, is purported to be the world's oldest known flowering plant. Many other fine Middle Jurassic plant fossils are on display in the local museum.
The lush stands of vegetation which colonised the delta had another effect in addition to stabilising the shifting sediments, they also attracted the attentions of herbivorous dinosaurs which would come to browse. The herbivores, in turn, attracted the carnivores. As the creatures roamed and hunted they left behind their footprints in the wet sand and mud, and these echoes from a long-dead world – in the form of in-filled casts – can be found at several places along the coast including amongst the jumble of fallen sandstone blocks which litter the cliff foot toward Saltwick.
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