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Religious Uses: Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian: Whitby

The monastery of Streoneshalh, later Whitby Abbey, was founded about 656 A.D. by Oswy, King of Northumbria, in fulfilment of a vow made before his victory over the pagan king Penda, at the battle of Winwidfield, fought in November, 654. St. Hilda was made abbess of this monastery, and Oswy's daughter Aelfleda took the veil and eventually, in 680, succeeded Hilda as abbess; she died in 713. (Cartularium abbathiae de Whiteby, Surtees Soc.). Tradition relates that at this early date crosses and rosaries were made for the inmates of the monastery from the jet found in the neighborhood. The "Whitby jet," so popular and fashionable in the eighteenth century, was largely derived from the same source, and since then has had several revivals, until replaced by black-stained chalcedony, the so-called onyx, and, later still, by steel carved with glass and glass itself.