Hartlepool Abbey

Hieu was selected by Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne in 640 to found and run a new abbey at Hereteu. After Hieu left for Tadcaster in 649, Hilda (later Hilda of Whitby) was appointed second abbess of the abbey by Bishop Aidan. When she arrived, there were some serious problems with the monks living there. Hilda organised it so that everyone had to pray, work and rest according to a clear timetable. In 655, King Oswiu of Northumbria sent his one-year-old daughter Ælfflæd to stay with Hilda, "to be consecrated to God in perpetual virginity", an important gesture. Hilda stayed at Hartlepool Abbey until 657 or 658 when at Aidans behest she became founding abbess of Whitby Abbey, then called…

Built in the early Anglo-Saxon style, it was likely a walled enclosure of simple wooden huts surrounding a church. Hartlepool was a double monastery. It was a joint-house of both monks and nuns, presided over from 640 to 649 by Hieu, the first female abbess to ever be put in charge of such an institution. Hilda ruled men and women, Bede speaks of male students in the monasteries of the Abbess Hilda, Most of the priests were from the Celtic church who had travelled to Northumbria from Ireland or the island of Iona. Others had arrived as part of the Pope's mission to Britain.