Rievaulx Abbey
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 Location within North Yorkshire
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| Monastery information | |
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| Order | Cistercian |
| Established | 1132 |
| Disestablished | 1538 |
| Mother house | Clairvaux Abbey |
| Diocese | Diocese of York |
| People | |
| Founder(s) | Walter l'Espec and Thurstan, Archbishop of York |
| Important associated figures | Ailred of Rievaulx |
| Site | |
| Location | Rievaulx, North Yorkshire, England |
| Coordinates | 54°15′27″N 1°7′0″W / 54.2575°N 1.116667°W |
| Visible Remains | substantial |
| Public Access | yes |
Rievaulx Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey headed by the Abbot of Rievaulx. It is located in Rievaulx (pronounced /riːˈvoʊ/ ree-voh), near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, England.
It was one of the wealthiest abbeys in England and was dissolved by Henry VIII of England in 1538. Its ruins are a tourist attraction.
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[edit] Foundation
Rievaulx Abbey was founded in 1132 by twelve monks from Clairvaux Abbey as a mission for the colonisation of the north of England and Scotland. It was the first Cistercian abbey in the north. With time it became one of the great Cistercian abbeys of Yorkshire, second only to Fountains Abbey in fame.[citation needed]
The remote location was ideal for the Cistercians, whose desire was to follow a strict life of prayer and self-sufficiency with little contact with the outside world. The patron, Walter Espec, settled another Cistercian community, founding Wardon Abbey in Bedfordshire on unprofitable wasteland on one of his inherited estates.
[edit] Financial prosperity
The abbey lies in a wooded dale by the River Rye, sheltered by hills. To have enough flat land to build on, a small part of the river was diverted several metres west of its former channel. (he monks altered the course of the river three times during the 12th century. The old course of the river is visible in the abbey's grounds. This is one illustration of the technical ingenuity of the monks, who over time built up a very profitable business mining lead and iron, rearing sheep and selling wool to buyers from all over Europe. Rievaulx Abbey became one of the greatest and wealthiest in England, with 140 monks and many more lay brothers, receiving grants of land totalling 6,000 acres (24 km²) and establishing daughter houses in England and Scotland.
Towards the end of the 13th century the abbey had incurred a great deal of debt with its building projects and lost revenue due to an epidemic of sheep scab (psoroptic mange). This ill fortune was compounded by Scottish raids in the early 14th century. To make matters worse the decimation of the population caused by the Black Death in the mid 14th century made it difficult to recruit new lay brothers for manual labour. As a result the abbey was forced to lease much of its land. By 1381 there were only fourteen choir monks, three lay brothers and the abbot left at Rievaulx, and some buildings were reduced in size.
By the 15th century the original Cistercian practices of strict observance according Saint Benedict's rule had been abandoned in favour of a more comfortable lifestyle. It was then permitted to eat meat and more private living accommodation was created for the monks, and the abbot now had a substantial private household.
[edit] Dissolution
The abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538. At that time there were said to be 72 buildings occupied by an abbot and 21 monks, attended by 102 servants, with an income of £351 a year. It also had a prototype blast furnace at Laskill, producing cast iron as efficiently as a modern blast furnace; according to Gerry McDonnell (archeometallurgist of the University of Bradford), the closure of Rievaulx delayed the Industrial Revolution for two and a half centuries.
Henry ordered the buildings to be rendered uninhabitable and stripped of valuables such as lead. The abbey site was granted to the Earl of Rutland, one of Henry's advisers, until it passed to the Duncombe family.
In the 1750s Thomas Duncombe III beautified the estate by building the terrace with two Grecian-style temples; these temples, now called Rievaulx Terrace & Temples, are in the care of the National Trust. The ruins of the abbey are in the care of English Heritage.
When awarded a life peerage in 1983, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman, adopted the title Baron Wilson of Rievaulx.
[edit] References
- Peter FERGUSSON & Stuart HARRISON, Rievaulx Abbey. Community, Architecture, Memory, Yale University Press, 2000.
- How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas Woods, (2005), ISBN 0-89526-038-7
- Henry "Stamped Out Industrial Revolution", David Derbyshire, The Daily Telegraph (21 June 2002)
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rievaulx Abbey |
- 1132 establishments
- Christian monasteries established in the 12th century
- Churches in North Yorkshire
- Cistercian monasteries in England
- English Heritage sites in North Yorkshire
- History of North Yorkshire
- Monasteries in North Yorkshire
- Religious organizations established in the 1130s
- Ruins in North Yorkshire
- Visitor attractions in North Yorkshire
