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Taking a walk up to the ruins of Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire. 
Whitby Abbey was a 7th-century Christian monasterythat later became a Benedictine abbey.
The abbey church was situated overlooking the North Sea on Whitby's East Cliff.
The abbey church was situated overlooking the North Sea on Whitby's East Cliff.
The abbey and its possessions were confiscated by the crown under Henry VIII, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1545. It thereafter fell into ruins.
The Abbey was also damaged during the First World War, when two German battlecruisers shelled the town, apparently aiming for the coastguard station.
The sandstone used in its walls was soft and easily carved, but it is also susceptible to geological weathering on this windswept stretch of coast.
The tracery still standing in the windows gives it a beautiful ravaged effect.
And the way the sandstone weathers gives the abbey's walls a beautiful vermiculated effect today.
