Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
the white-painted wrought iron railing and black and gold-gilded lampposts wouldn't look out of place in a Victorian landscape. Apparently, during the summer months and warmer weather, visitors can go into the lighthouse at the end of the pier, ascending clockwise up the 81 steps to the octagonal white lantern room, just as the then-princess Victoria did in 1834 on a royal visit to Whitby.
But today is not a warmer weather day and the door to the tower looks firmly closed. I'm not sure I would have fancied experiencing the balcony outside the lantern room in today's inclemencies anyway. The waves whip a white foam around the sandstone base of the pier and the wind tries relentlessly to snatch away the now very crumpled map that I have clutched tightly in my hand.
Against the brooding sky, the lighthouse looks ripe for a haunting. And a haunting it does indeed have.
It's impossible to know just how long there has been a bridge on this spot at Whitby. The earliest written records date to the 14th century. But as these records mention trying to raise funds for bridge repairs, that could very well mean that by this time the existing structure was already quite old.
It's certainly likely there's been a bridge here or in the vicinity for as long as Whitby has been settled, as for centuries there was no other way to cross between the west and east cliffs without taking to the water.
It was only as recently as 1980 that an alternative bridge further up river was constructed that meant people and traffic could cross from one side of the harbour to the other without detouring all the way over into the next town.
For many years, at least since the 18th century but probably as early as the 16th, a drawbridge spanned the river here, raising and lowering its leaves each time a ship required entrance to the upper harbour. These drawbridges caused a few problems and seemed to sustain persistent damage from ships passing through them.
Vessels would collide with the raised leaves and counterweights when passing through, and it was common practice to tie boats up to the bridge supports, which put the whole structure under strain.
The drawbridge design was also too narrow to allow bigger vessels to pass through, including some ships that had been built in Whitby's Upper Harbour only for their first voyage to be cut short upon discovering that their shipbuilders had made them too wide to ever leave.
In 1746, shipbuilder Benjamin Coates constructed a vessel in the upper harbour that ended up being several inches too wide to pass through the gap in the raised drawbridge. Incredibly, in realising this, he actually petitioned to be allowed to chip away at the bridge supports to create a gap wide enough for the ship to pass through. We can only hope that his request was denied.
But by the time Bram Stoker and therefore Mina visited the town, a new swing bridge had been installed. And although today we will walk across a slightly wider and electric-powered swing bridge than the one Stoker walked across, it doesn't look too terribly different to the one the author would recognise from his visits.
Even in today's modern times, the vehicle and foot traffic of Whitby are at the mercy of the sea and its vessels. And as we approach the cheerfully red-painted bridge, a crowd and queue of traffic waits patiently at its foot as the leaves swing open gently and slowly to allow a small fishing boat to pass through.
I imagine that for residents needing to cross this way regularly, this must get somewhat annoying. And I can see with my own eyes why there are reports of severe bottlenecks at the bridge in high summer when the tourist season is in full swing, as it's a very narrow point to funnel all the traffic and pedestrians of Whitby from one side to the other.
But, not being local, or here in high season, I'm lucky enough in my blissful ignorance to be able to relish watching the little boat chug through, wondering how the crew feel about the assembled crowd gawking at their passage, and imagining Stoker standing right here on this spot.
Perhaps he was writing Lucy and Mina's adventures in his head while he waited for the swinging arms of the bridge to come slowly, inchingly, together once more. It seems odd to think I'm standing here watching the same scene as so many people before me. A very distinctly Whitby activity that's been repeated over and over again for hundreds and hundreds of years. And then the boat is through.
The assembled crowd is released to go on their way and the spell is broken. Crossing at last, we find ourselves in what many think of as the old part of Whitby, the cliff where locals continued to live and work and ply their trade whilst the wealthy Victorian tourists and their upmarket lodging houses rapidly spread over the west cliff.
The streets here are narrow and run warren-like down to the water in the old pier on one side and up to the base of the cliff and the abbey steps on the other. Shops, cafes, pubs, houses and museums are crammed cheek by jowl into what's actually quite a small space at the foot of the East Cliff.
But you could easily lose hours, even days, exploring all the nooks and crannies and alleys, not to mention the fascinating array of shops. Their vibrant and eclectic scents and window displays doing an excellent job of distracting me from my task. But I pull my attention back to the map and Mina's journey.
She doesn't describe the route she took to reach the abbey steps, but the most direct way would either be along Church Street with its many jet shops, or the narrower Sandgate. Either route would have taken our heroine past the market square and old town hall, where we must pause to meet another of Whitby's ghosts.
Putting the bustling market square behind us, it's time to head back into the pages of Dracula. We walk along Church Street in the direction of the famous 199 Steps,
Showing 641–660 of 737 · page 33 of 37
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