The first monastery was founded in 657 AD by the Anglo-Saxon era King of Northumbria, Oswy (Oswiu) as Streoneshalh (the older name for Whitby). He appointed Lady Hilda, abbess of Hartlepool Abbey and niece of Edwin the first Christian king of Northumbria, as founding abbess. In 664 the Synod of Whitby, at which King Oswiu ruled that the Northumbrian church would adopt the Roman calculation of Easter and monastic tonsure, took place at the abbey. In 1914, Whitby Abbey was shelled by German battlecruisers Von der Tann and Derfflinger, aiming for the signal post on the end of the headland. The foreboding ruins are said to have provided inspiration for Bram Stoker's gothic masterpiece Dracula. In the book Whitby is the destination for the doomed ship Demeter, which carries Dracula to England