Pre-history
Persons from the 7th Century
Persons from the Middle Ages
Some lesser mortals from the Middle Ages
Prior
Thomas de Melsonby
Local Rhyme
Booklets
The rhyme - St Abb - St Helen - St Bey
St Bey's on Dunbar Sands lies closest to the sea
With Bey there are problems also. Some equate her with St Bee associated with St Bee's Head on the west coast of Cumbria, but it is now thought that this lady did not exist and it is a reference to a Norse holy bangle on which people could swear. The Norse had little impact on the culture of what was Northumbria.
On the other hand Begu did exist in the 7th C. For some time she lived in a monastery at Hackness near Scarborough and only 20 miles from Hilda's important monastery at Whitby. Begu was credited with seeing in a vision the soul of Hilda being taken to heaven on the night that Hilda died and before word of Hilda's death could reach Hackness. In the 10th C Hilda's relics were removed from Whitby to Glastonbury. Begu's relics were brought to Whitby in the early 12th C to compensate.
Bayswell
is used in street names in Dunbar near the open grassed glebe. 19th C
local historians ignored St Bey. The Burgh Surveyor in 1837 was more helpful
in his map for harbour developments. Bay's Well is shown within a cave
at the base of a cliff and on the seashore just west of the present leisure
pool and at the
east end of Bay's Well Shore below the glebe. It lies between the high
and low water marks. Its nearness to the sea cannot be challenged. The
entrance to this cave faces north and is almost completely hidden from
the land, so is easily overlooked. After struggling over slippery boulders
when the sea is back one can easily walk into this cave, perhaps fashioned
by man in a similar way as it was at the east end of the subterranean
passage below what was Dunbar Castle's gatehouse. At the back of the cave,
water issues from the rock and tumbles into a large irregular basin at
chest height. Perhaps here is St Bey's 'kirk'; a holy
well; after all, St Ebba's 'kirk' was an oratory, not a kirk. Regarding
the small amount of sand near the cave, sand in other cases has signified
a beach. Not only is there the mystery of water gushing from the stone,
but the well and the visitor are within the bowels of the earth: surely
the sacredness of this place goes back beyond Christianity.
Note - In a later version of this rhyme St Bey is replaced by St Anne in the second last line. This corresponds to the disappearance of the Church of St Bey and the building of the Church of St Anne nearby.