RIEVAULX ABBEY – YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND
RIEVAULX ABBEY – YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND
Rievaulx Abbey was founded in 1132, and was the first Cistercian abbey to be established in the north of England.
It quickly became one of the most powerful and spiritually renowned monastery’s in Britain.
The first buildings at Rievaulx were temporary wooden structures.
In the late 1130s stone buildings around the present cloister, were constructed.
Rievaulx’s most famous abbot was Aelred, who had been a steward in David I of Scotland’s household.
Aelred came to Rievaulx as a postulant in 1134, rising quickly to be elected abbot in 1147.
Aelred was a brilliant writer and England’s most revered biblical scholar.
By the time of his death in 1167 the community had doubled in size, having 140 monks and about 500 lay brothers.
From the second half of the 14th century, Rievaulx witnessed dramatic changes in the communal life of the monks.
The lay brothers, who had performed most of the monastery’s manual work, almost entirely disappeared from within the community, and substitute labour had to be hired.
Rievaulx Abbey was shut down on 3rd December 1538.
This was part of the Suppression of the Monasteries that took place under Henry VIII in 1536–40.
By this time Rievaulx’s community had shrunk to just 23 monks.
It was then sold to Thomas Manners – 1st Earl of Rutland, who was closely associated with the royal court.
Rutland dismantled the buildings, reserving the roof leads and the bells for the king.
One of the buildings within the abbey precinct was called ‘the Yron Smiths’.
Abbey records show that this was a water-powered forge used for making the many objects of iron required by a monastery, from nails to tools and cutlery.
Under Rutland the ironworks grew in scale.
By 1545 enough iron ore was being smelted to keep four furnaces busy.
The vaulted undercroft of the refectory, was used as a dry place to store the charcoal used to heat up the ore to the temperature required to extract molten iron.
The ironworks continued to grow throughout the later 16th century.
The addition of a blast furnace in 1577, was possibly the first in the north of England.
A new forge was built at the south end of the old monastic precinct, which was re-equipped between 1600 and 1612.
By the 1640s, local supplies of timber for charcoal were all but exhausted, and the ironworks was then closed.
From the late 18th century the abbey ruins became an increasingly popular destination for visitors.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the abbey ruins were in a state of imminent collapse.
Minor repairs were carried out in 1907, but the scale of the repairs needed was such that only state intervention could save the site.
The Office of Works took the ruins at Rievaulx into guardianship in July 1917.
Immediate repairs were begun, in spite of the shortage of labour and materials brought about by the First World War.
After 1918 Sir Frank Baines, Principal Architect at the Office of Works, devised pioneering engineering techniques at Rievaulx such as reinforced concrete beams hidden in the upper walls to stabilise the buildings.
In the 1920s Sir Charles Peers, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, ordered the removal of much of the fallen debris, to expose buried elements of the building.
The work was carried out by war veterans.
This policy of preservation and display set the style for the presentation of ancient monuments in Britain for the next two generations.
The ruins of its main buildings are today a tourist attraction, owned and maintained by English Heritage.