St Hilda and the Ammonite

St Hilda and the Ammonite

Ammonite fossils found on the shore at Whitby are said to be the petrified remains of snakes that once infested the Whitby area. Hilda brought the infestation to an end turning the snakes into stone so as to clear a site for the building of her abbey. There are three snakestones in the arms of the town. And Hilda is often depicted holding an ammonite, or snake stone, in one hand and a model of her abbey in the other. St Hilda's actions are immortalised in Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion:

When Whitby's nuns exalting told,
Of thousand snakes, each one
Was changed into a coil of stone,
When Holy Hilda pray'd:
Themselves, without their holy ground,
Their stony folds had often found.

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