An important figure in the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, she was abbess in several convents and recognised for the wisdom that drew kings to her for advice.

The source of information about Hilda is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede in 731, who was born approximately eight years before her death.

[1] When Hilda was still an infant, her father was poisoned while in exile at the court of the Brittonic king of Elmet in what is now West Yorkshire.

In 627, King Edwin was baptised on Easter Day, 12 April, along with his entire court, which included the 13-year-old Hilda,[2] in a small wooden church hastily constructed for the occasion near the site of the present York Minster.

[3] Hilda's elder sister, Hereswith, married Ethelric, brother of King Anna of East Anglia, who with all of his daughters became renowned for their Christian virtues.

At the age of 33, Hilda decided instead to answer the call of Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne and returned to Northumbria to live as a nun.

[5] No trace remains of this abbey, but its monastic cemetery has been found near the present St Hilda's Church, Hartlepool.

[6] Archaeological evidence shows that her monastery was in the Celtic style, with its members living in small houses, each for two or three people.

The tradition in double monasteries, such as Hartlepool and Whitby, was that men and women lived separately but worshipped together in church.

Most of those present, including Hilda, accepted the King's decision to adopt the method of calculating Easter currently used in Rome, establishing Roman practice as the norm in Northumbria.

[8] Hilda suffered from a fever for the last seven years of her life, but she continued to work until her death on 17 November 680 AD, at what was then the advanced age of sixty-six.

She died after receiving viaticum, and her legend holds that at the moment of her death the bells of the monastery of Hackness tolled.

[9] A local legend says that when sea birds fly over the abbey they dip their wings in honour of Saint Hilda.

Another legend tells of a plague of snakes which Hilda turned to stone, supposedly explaining the presence of ammonite fossils on the shore.

The veneration of Hilda from an early period is attested by the inclusion of her name in the calendar of Saint Willibrord, written at the beginning of the 8th century.

Hilda of Whitby is considered one of the patron saints of learning and culture, including poetry, due to her patronage of Cædmon.

After the Norman conquest that began in 1066 AD, monks from Evesham re-founded the abbey as a Benedictine house for men.

A community of Anglican sisters, the Order of the Holy Paraclete was founded in 1915 at St Hilda's Priory,[17] on the western edge of Whitby town.

During the British Empire in India, Anglican missionaries built "St Hilda Boarding School" at Miri-Maka.

Hilda appears as a main character in the 1994 novel Absolution by Murder, the first book in Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma mysteries.

[22] Jill Dalladay's 2015 novel The Abbess of Whitby combines historical record and fiction to imagine Hilda's life before she became a nun.

[24] Vibeke Vasbo's Danish novel Hildas sang (Gyldendal, 1991) was translated into English by Gaye Kynoch and published in 2018 as The Song of Hild by Sacristy Press.