As anyone who follows this blog will know, both Lenora and Miss Jessel enjoy partaking of the fanciful delights of the Whitby Goth Weekend once in a while.
Whitby is a quaint seaside town in North Yorkshire. Narrow cobbled streets and a bustling harbour nestle beneath dramatic coastal cliffs. East Cliff houses the picturesque Medieval Abbey and the Goth Magnet, St Mary’s Church (or more precisely, the graveyard), while West Cliff is crowned by the famous Wale Bones Arch, harking back to the town’s Whaling past, and is home to genteel eighteenth and nineteenth century terraced houses.
Whitby’s most famous, literary, gothic inhabitant is surely Dracula, who washed up in the town when the ship The Demeter crashed upon the rocky shore. Bram Stoker was inspired by the landscape and buildings of the town, during a sea-side holiday in 1890. Today, Whitby is home to the hugely successful twice yearly Whitby Goth Weekend, brainchild of Jo Hampshire.
WGW has been running since the 1990’s and was primarily intended to be a celebration of Goth culture and music, however, in recent years it has morphed into a celebration of all things weird, wonderful and creative, attracting a wide array of different subcultures: from Gothic Victorians, Steampunks, Cosplayers, and many others.
This year, the Abbey was off limits because of the torrential rain, and a lot of the campsites were flooded out. Despite this inauspicious start to the weekend, Saturday was an unusually sunny and mild day for an English coastal town in November. Here are some of the wonderful costumes on display.
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