THE PAST IN RUINS - Rievaulx Abbey

At the height of their influence in the 12th century, the Cistercians, in a very short space of time, had founded over eighty monasteries across the UK. Their appeal was as a purist ' back to basics' reform movement, reviving St Benedict's Rule as their essential guide. They were also pioneers in opening up the possibility of a spiritual life, to those from poorer, more uneducated backgrounds, through creating a lay brotherhood. Though this spiritual hierarchy, based on class, education, literacy and work, proved to be pernicious one, and a constant source of huge contention.

The Cistercians were also the pioneers of 'grange' farming. Where groups of lay brothers would run small holdings across the, often vast and widely spread, monastic estates. These 'granges' supported the monastery with food to consume, but also financially, through the sale of grain, and more importantly wool. The monks, from necessity, became expert at irrigation and water management. At Rievaulx Abbey they completely diverted the direction of the river Rye, to better serve their household and farming needs.

By 1275 Rievaulx's 'grange' farms housed a huge flock of 14,000 sheep. But in the following year, an infestation of murrain began to totally decimate the number of sheep, and the abbey's finances with it. King Edward 1st was forced to call in administrators by 1279. Early in the1300's bankruptcy loomed, then the Scots raided the abbey, there was extremely bad weather over a number of years, resulting in poor crop yields, a widespread famine followed, and then plague arrived. Monks, irrespective of whether they were, choir or lay, died. With a diminishing lay brotherhood the abbey was forced to lease out its 'granges' to tenant farmers. The Cistercian model of monastic life appeared to be at the point of crumbling.

Cistercian monasteries were secreted away in the country, generally in areas sparsely populated, their abbeys, now in ruins, have suffered less from their dressed stone being robbed away by the surrounding populace. So once the King's men in 1538 had left with the communion silver, the gilded shrines, the ornate robes, jewels and the lead from the roof, much of its carved stonework at least, was left untouched.

Similar to Fountains Abbey, at Rievaulx, we find a relatively intact abbey and ground plan of one of the major religious institutions of the medieval period. Not just in the North, but in the entirety of England. By the time of its most famous Saint and third abbot, Aelred, in the 12th century, it had grown to 140 choir monks, supported by 500 lay brothers. Aelred's reputation drawing young novitiates to Rievaulx, inspired by the power of his writing and spiritual presence.

This was not to last long beyond his death in 1167.  By the mid 13th century the total number of monks had halved. The causes were complex, but there was also the arrival of the second wave of monastic reformers, in the Franciscans and Dominicans. With their focus on poverty and a distinctly urban 'hands on' ministry, this was proving more potent and attractive to religiously inspired men and women.

The human tragedy that resulted from the series of environmental and health disasters that happened across Europe in the 14th century, induced a profound change in attitude in the medieval mind. At Rievaulx those lay brethren who remained were less deferential, less inclined to play second fiddle to the largely aristocratic choir monks, and demanded an equal say in the running of the Abbey. At its lowest point in the 14th century decline, the abbey was inhabited by only 15 choir monks and 3 lay brothers.

Before the dissolution of Rievaulx Abbey in 1539  the population of monks had recovered from its 14th century nadir, to 23 choir monks and 102 (now paid) servants and attendants. The lay brotherhood, as a secondary level of religious practitioner, had completely been abandoned. With its subsequent suppression and dissolution, the abbey buildings themselves were to be abandoned too, to rack and ruin.

Post the Dissolution, these ruins were left to naturally decay and collapse for over a century and a half. The site of Rievaulx was bought in 1695 by Charles Duncombe, a banker in the City of London, and reputedly the richest man in England at the time. Once ennobled, as Lord Faversham, he built a grand house and developed the grounds that surrounded Rievaulx. Creating a viewing terrace with a sequence of temples and platforms from which to glimpse the abbey's gothic ruins in the valley beneath.

This Rievaulx Terrace was part of 'the  picturesque movement' in garden landscaping, an early flowering of what eventually would form the English style of landscape garden. This led on to the Romantic movement, where Turner came to paint Rievaulx, the Wordsworth's visited. Abbeys as poetic ruins, became places to visit and admire, what we now refer to as the tourist industry. By 1917 the Office of Works was created to manage and conserve the condition of these precious ancient monuments. Rievaulx Abbey would then finally re-emerge from its cloaking mounds of medieval demolition rubble. 

Today, we can once again admire its beauty and explore its layout, with a clarity and ease perhaps not experienced since the time of the dissolution itself. It's possible now to have a sense for why Rievaulx Abbey is where it is. The seclusion, the quiet and the landscape it is placed within, presenting a tangible atmosphere of a spiritual retreat and place of contemplation, that is all but lost to us in our 21st century noisy urban lives.