Fitz
speaker
397 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Fitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
recounting that as he spoke the last words of the rites the apparition disappeared and the heaviness went out of the atmosphere he declared that the menace of kettleness was ended but unfortunately the schoolmaster never recovered from the shock and went on to suffer a breakdown Of course, this makes a great story, especially for a self-proclaimed exorcist recounting his life's work.
But is there any truth to it? And did the Reverend really end the terror of the Kettle Ness Shore? Well, we should probably bear in mind that this account comes from a man who also claims to have exorcised Loch Ness and the Bermuda Triangle. But that doesn't discount the Barghest legend itself. And when we look into it a bit further, it gets very strange and maybe a little sad.
It's time to leave Tate Hill Sands behind us now and follow the route taken by both the Black Dog of the Dimitri and Mina to our next location, the churchyard at the top of the cliff. And to do so, we need to ascend the famous 199 steps. an absolutely iconic landmark, no one is exactly sure just how old the 199 steps are.
The first written mention of them dates back to 1370, but they are very likely older, leading as they do up to the Church of St Mary's, which was built in the 12th century, and of course Whitby Abbey, founded in the 7th century.
The original steps were made of wood and were described as being brightly painted but these are long gone now having been replaced with stone in 1774 and it's this stone staircase that Mina would have encountered on the last stage of her frantic dash to Lucy's side.
The staircase is wide, wide enough for four or five people abreast, and 19th century writers indicate that even in Bram Stoker's time, this width was necessary to accommodate a high volume of foot traffic. In 1835, Sir George Head described this common scene on the church steps.
these steps may be seen every sunday covered from top to bottom with old and young parents at the decline of life children at its commencement both together surmounting the arduous ascent and wending their way up to the sacred edifice For many years St Mary's, the Norman church at the top of the cliff, was the only parish church for several miles, serving many of the surrounding villages.
And even as the years went on and chapels started springing up around the area to fulfil the needs of a growing population, the parishioners still generally owed allegiance to the Mother Church of St Mary's and would therefore have to travel the distance to Whitby and traverse the 199 steps to be baptised, married or indeed buried.
We stand at the bottom of the staircase, the steps worn smooth from hundreds of years of use, wide, shallow grooves carved into the stone at the far edges by a million feet that chose the path nearest the thin iron handrail. On the right-hand side, as we stand at the bottom of the steps looking up, a broad, cobbled ramp follows the staircase's ascent, and this is known as the donkey track,
and is a route well used by our hooved friends throughout the years, many of them in more recent decades on their way to give donkey rides on the beach to holidaying children. Buildings and houses run all the way up to, and seemingly into, the side of the steps and donkey track.
the cobbled ramp wrapping around the corner of a three-storey whitewashed building bearing the sign Abbey Steps Tea Rooms, whose lower windows are almost swallowed up in a turn of the track.
Further up the donkey track is a cottage whose front door opens directly onto the steep cobbled slope, which I can only imagine must be quite a challenge in ice and snow and definitely a house for a hardy soul. As we begin to climb above the town we can see over the left-hand railing the steps down to Tate Hill Sands from whence we just came.
Beyond the pier running along a shelf at the base of the cliff above Collier's Hope lies Henrietta Street where a famous kipper smokehouse called Fortune's Kippers has been in business since 1872. and whose somewhat overpowering smell has been hailed as part of the Whitby experience for decades. Henrietta Street stretches along the base of the cliff for a while until it peters out suddenly.
A ramp branches off from here, forking to either the base of East Pier or a drop-off straight into the sea. whilst a grassy ledge known by the Old Norse name of the Haggleith, meaning sloping area of land on the cliff, continues the trajectory of Henrietta Street for a little way further along the cliff shelf.
This area was once much larger and filled with houses and businesses, but several serious landslips, including one in 1787 and one in 1871, sent several buildings crashing down the cliff. The once respectable area was eventually abandoned due to this danger and became the haunt of the poorest of society and the town's ne'er-do-wells.
There was also danger from above for dwellers of the Haggleith, the area sitting as it does directly beneath the graveyard of St Mary's Church, where coastal erosion nibbles away at the cliff, and severe weather such as ice or heavy rain occasionally opens up the ground to send the bones of buried parishioners hurtling down onto the buildings below.
This still happens today, with one of the most recent occurrences in January of 2013. Although the rector at the time reassured everyone that the bones would of course be collected and respectfully reinterred, and noted that, as the graveyard has been closed for burials since the mid-19th century, no one need be concerned about anything too, um, fresh tumbling down the cliff.
According to the old fishermen of the village, St Mary's Graveyard was not a good place to be on the night following the funeral of a man of the sea.
But if you were to venture out on such a night, you might just hear the sound of horses' hooves clattering across the abbey plain, the sound growing closer and louder until you can hear the creak of wheels and jangle of harnesses as a carriage bears directly towards the church, no obstacles seeming to halt its progress.
From out of the blackness, six horses emerge, all of them a coal black that seems darker than the night itself, and behind them, cloaked in a velvet pall, a driver steers them towards a freshly filled grave. In their wake, a line of skeletal figures forms a train of mourners, and reaching their intended target, the ghastly spectacle starts to circle the grave.
Showing 361–380 of 397 · page 19 of 20
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