Why the coffins rested: walking the 199 steps
4 July 2026
Every walking tour we run ends the same way: at the bottom of the Church Stairs, with somebody asking whether it's true about the coffins. It is — and the full story is better than the short version.
The short version
The broad wooden platforms you pass on the climb — there are several, and regulars know each by heart — are coffin rests. Until well into the twentieth century, the dead of the east side were carried up these stairs to St Mary's churchyard on the shoulders of bearers, and the rests are where the coffin was set down while the bearers got their breath. Look closely and you'll see the flat boards are exactly coffin-length.
The longer version
The stairs are far older than the handrail, older than the count. There were "Church Stairs" here by 1340, when they appear in the abbey records, and they were wooden until about 1770, when the present stone steps went in — Sneaton stone, quarried a few miles inland. The count of 199 is real (people check, constantly, and children announce the result at the top), though nobody has ever produced a satisfying reason for the number. The best answer our guides can offer: it's one less than 200, and towns keep the stories that are slightly odd.
Beside the steps runs the Donkey Road — the cobbled slope the pack animals used, hauling goods and, on occasion, the less able-bodied. And at the top: the Caedmon Cross, honouring the abbey herdsman who around 680 AD became the first English poet whose name we know; St Mary's with its ships'-lamp-lit box pews; and the churchyard headstones that Bram Stoker read on a wet week's holiday in 1890 and put straight into Dracula — including one name he lifted whole: Swales.
Walk it with us
Our Old Town tour climbs the steps every Wednesday and Saturday, leaving the museum on Church Street at 10:30am. We take the climb slowly — the coffin rests work just as well for the living — and the view from the top, out over the pantiles to the harbour mouth, remains the finest free thing in Whitby. Booking via the contact page; members and children free.