St Mary's Church, Whitby arch is a Jacobean pew. There is a monument to Sir Richard Cholmley who died in 1631. Two significant land slips due to broken drainage and torrential rain, the first occurring in November 2012, have placed the churchyard, and properties below the cliff, in significant jeopardy. Whitby town councillor Steve Smith stated the church was in no danger, having been built on solid rock. Human remains have fallen onto the street below, and pathways on the cliff-side of the church have been closed. Bram Stoker used St Mary's Church graveyard as the setting for a scene in his novel, "Dracula":
Dracula (1924 play) Van Helsing addresses the audience with a warning that "there are such things". The Irish author Bram Stoker wrote the novel "Dracula" while working as a manager for Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London; he continued to work for Irving after it was published in May 1897. Stoker secured his theatrical rights to the story that same month by holding a staged reading at the Lyceum; this hasty adaptation was never performed again. In 1899, Hamilton Deane, a young Irish actor whose family owned an estate next to one belonging to Stoker's father, joined Irving's company. In the early 1920s,