Times were hard for the folk of the fishing villages along Yorkshire’s coast and survival depended, as it still does today, upon state-of-the-art equipment and clothing.

Probably the simplest, yet most effective of these vital tools was the gansey, a jumper knitted from thick wool that provided much-needed protection from the elements without impeding the wearer’s movements.

A staple part of the North Sea economy, ganseys would be woven by mothers, daughters and sweethearts while the men were at sea.

The church is holding a special exhibition called Women’s Voices featuring stories of women along the coast has been put together by Stephen Friend, a lecturer at York St John University.

In addition to the exhibition the church has been decorated with people’s ganseys from the Whitby area including some made by the late Marjorie Fewster from Hinderwell.

And to coincide with it Deb Gillanders from the church is urging people to wear their ganseys and come along to a service on Sunday which she has christened “Gansey Sunday”.

Miss Gillanders said: “I started approaching people for their ganseys and it just rolled on. Now when I’ve put them up in the church it looks like the church is full.”

Among the ganseys is one belonging to Jennifer Russell (58) of Silver Street, Whitby, who inherited her father’s best cream gansey, which she will display at the exhibition, and she now wears it in fond memory of her father.

Her brother Mike Russell (51), of Sandsend, also inherited a number of their father's ganseys and admits that he will leave his own jerseys to his own children.

Mike is coxswain for Whitby Lifeboat and was given a Flamborough-patterned gansey as a gift from the lifeboat team there. Although he still occasionally wears the garment when aboard ship, Mike admits that modern garments have the upper-hand when it comes to practically and insulation, and so the gansey has for many years been in steady decline as a working garment.

At a time when communities were much more isolated than at present, each fishing village would have their own distinctive pattern, woven into the gansey itself.

A Whitby gansey is therefore clearly distinguishable from a Scarborough or Filey gansey, and even individual families would add their own twist to the village’s design to make them unique to their family.

Such was the durable nature of the garment that the gansey was often passed down from generation to generation.

In the event of a tragedy at sea, the tight-knit nature of the jumper meant it could never be separated from the body by the waves and individuals washed-ashore could therefore be identified by the unique pattern they were wearing.