Author brings out book about 'my heroine' St Hilda who hosted Synod of Whitby

Elisabeth said 50 years ago when she lived in Whitby, she wrote a little book for tourists about the town and its history.

"Very recently I learnt about the work of archaeologists in Hartlepool, and was surprised to uncover a whole new aspect of St Hilda’s life and her connections with the Northern Saints,” she said.

“Hilda is my heroine, a royal lady in the seventh Century living in the north of England who was given authority in a man’s world and made a success of it.

"It was not until I recently moved to Hartlepool that I realised how she had been an Abbess in Hartlepool for eight years or so before ever arriving in Whitby, and that because of the methods Celtic missionaries used to spread the Gospels, it seems likely that she remains Abbess of Hartlepool as well even when she moved to Whitby.”

Elisabeth read novels about her like The Song of Hild – the novels depict her as a tomboy and fighting with young men.

“Because her father had been a king, she had been taught to read and write.

“She moved round the country with royalty, and came across coinage when she was in the south,” she said.

“It is likely that by the age of 30 she will have been married and had a family, too, although nothing much Is recorded about her early life.

“So writers can fantasize wildly about the life of a royal lady in Anglo-Saxon times.”

Elisabeth said her book – her second after the handbook for tourists’ Whitby – concentrates on the details that the Venerable Bede recorded, and what the archaeologists uncovered in their many Hartlepool excavations.

“I wanted to mirror a whole era, and show how Hild’s influence still persists today.

“Before the Vikings invaded, the local kings fought each other fiercely over, territory and there were foreigners, Angles and Saxons, from Northern Europe who arrived and caused unrest,” she said.

“King Oswald persuaded Aidan and some monks to cross the land from Iona and settle in Lindisfarne.

“It was in pursuance of Aidan’s mission when he contacted Hilda and helped her to create a monastery on Hartlepool Headland.

"After ten years of rule, Oswald met King Penda in battle defending his territory, lost, and was cruelly dismembered.

“King Oswy, after a pause, took up the throne of Northumberland.

“It was Oswy who sent his daughter to Hartlepool to be cared for by Hilda, and it was Oswy who asked Hilda to host the Synod in Whitby.”

The Heart of the Headland, is on sale in Holman’s bookshop in Whitby, The Whitby Bookshop and also online.