St Bees is a coastal village, civil parish and electoral ward in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England, on the Irish Sea.

Within the parish is St Bees Head which is the only Heritage Coast between Wales and Scotland and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The Normans did not reach Cumberland until 1092, and when they took over the local lordships, William Meschin, Lord of Egremont, used the existing religious site[6] to found a Benedictine priory for a prior and six monks sometime between 1120 and 1135.

In about 1519 Edmund Grindal was born in Cross Hill House, St Bees, which still exists, and is marked with a plaque.

A devout Protestant, he made his mark in the reign of Edward VI, but had to flee to Strasbourg when the Catholic Mary I ascended the throne.

The oldest existing house dates from the early 16th century and the present Main Street was based on a string of farms and farmworkers' dwellings.

In 1816 St Bees Theological College was founded, and proved popular as it was first for the training of Church of England clergy outside Oxford and Cambridge.

[10] St Bees School embarked on an era of rapid expansion starting with the construction of the quadrangle in 1846 using compensation from the rich mine-owning Lowther family.

Gradually, during the 19th century, service employment for the school and lodgings for the college gave additional income, and with the advent of commuters, the village's social mix was becoming more middle class.

Tourism and quarries also provided employment, and many village men found work in the iron ore mines at Cleator.

Thus the 19th century saw the change from a rural backwater based on agriculture, to the more diversified role of a dormitory village for professional and industrial worker alike, and its growth into a minor academic centre.

[12] The former Marchon Chemical Company at Whitehaven, and UKAEA/BNFL at Sellafield both soaked up village labour released by the declining heavy iron and mining industries, and brought a large influx of the technical and scientific university-educated middle class into the village; rather like the first arrival of the professional classes a century earlier.

There is now an extensive science park – Westlakes, on the northern fringe of the parish, at which the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has its national headquarters.

[13] In 1981 an archaeological excavation at the priory revealed a vault with a lead coffin containing an astonishingly well preserved body – now known as the St Bees Man.

The village is served by St Bees railway station on the Cumbrian Coast Line, with trains from Barrow-in-Furness, Lancaster, Preston and Carlisle.

Coast-based recreational activities at St Bees are: windsurfing, kite-surfing, rock climbing, bouldering, swimming, jet-skiing, water-skiing, canoeing and para-gliding.

A new interpretation board and the steel banner were installed in summer 2013 by St Bees Parish Council and the Wainwright Society.