Saint Hilda, Abbess of Whitby

The Story of St Hilda

St Hilda is generally represented with a pastoral staff and carrying an abbey church. 

Often, there are ammonites at her feet. There are many many Legends about our Patron Saint and one such local folklore, claims that St Hilda freed Whitby of all evil snakes by tossing them from the Abbey cliffs. This we believe is to be the explanation for all the ammonite fossils that are spiralled that can be found along this coastline. 

There are many legends about St Hilda. 

The snake tale was so prevalent that you can still see relics of it today. The Whitby coat of arms still proudly displays three of Hilda’s snakes. There’s also a fossil named after her "ammonite hildoceras". If you are in our Parish church we have a chair with three ammonites carved into the back.

Hilda was born in 614 and was a princess of the Deiran family. She led a quiet life until at the age of thirty-three when she decided that she loved God so much that she became a nun. She had planned to leave England to enter a convent in France where her sister was already a nun, to live an exile for our Lord’s sake so that she might then more easily pray for all people. But Hilda was persuaded to join an English convent near her home in Northumbria. Very soon she was chosen to become abbess of the nearby double-monastery of Hartlepool, a religious community of monks and nuns living separately in adjoining convents. Later, she served as abbess of another double monastery that eventually became known as Whitby.

Bede was indeed very complimentary about Hilda’s skills as an abbess and celebrates Hilda’s monastic order for its observance of peace, charity and justice piety. Hilda’s strength and wisdom was known throughout the land, and her opinions were sought out by Kings and powerful figures.

Saint Hilda was the abbess in charge of the Abbey during the Synod of Whitby. This was an incredibly important meeting that took place in her monastery and it was called to resolve the date of Easter. Before this Celtic and Roman Christians celebrated the event on different dates. This was a very BIG change in English Christianity.

Hilda was a passionate student of scripture and her goodness and wisdom became known outside the monastery as a woman of great energy, who was a skilled manager and teacher, inspiring many to turn away from sin and wrongdoing. 

She died in 680. For the last six years of her life, Hilda was seriously ill, but she didn’t let it deter her from her work. Bede recorded that there were indeed many visions surrounding her death. It is believed that a monastery Hilda founded in Hackness, a nun dreamed that she saw Hilda’s soul ascend to heaven surrounded by angels through the open roof of her dormitory. By the time monks from Whitby had arrived to spread the word of Hilda’s death, the nuns there had already begun singing psalms and prayers for her.

St Hilda is the Patron Saint of our church and we celebrate her Feast day on November 17th every year.