HOLIDAY SNAPS - Winding Up A Holiday

Today was our last full day in North Yorkshire. After yesterday's mega wander around York, we planned to stay more local. So what to do with our day? Turns out, its to buy or eat food and return to places we've been too previously - to partake again in the already familiar. Starting off in Malton for breakfast at The Pantry. Then take another look around, a final bit of shopping. A couple of places haven't been open when we've visited earlier in the week. And guess what? They weren't there today either. So, after a re-visit to Roost to purchase more of their deeply lucious locally roasted coffee, we moved onwards to Helmsley, for the third and final time, just a tiny bit sooner than we'd expected. 

Coffee and cake in Mannion & Co. Cheese and olives from Hunter's of Helmsley. Cheese Straws, Parkin, and a Yorkshire Curd Tart from Thomas The Bakers. Yeah, I know, its more food for our far from sated stomachs, apparently. Plus, another visit to Saltbox Gallery, for a final recky to see what delightfully thing might pique our interest and beautifully augment our small, but choice, ceramic art object collection. We bought two small vases, by a potter Danielle Pilling, based in County Durham. They look like they'll 'form a conversation' as they say in arty circles, so I hear.

We'd not been to Rievaulx Abbey this visit, so today we put that to rights, and finished with having a light lunch there. Over the years I've taken lots of photos at this atmospheric ruin. Today was a bright sunny day, so I tried to find closer architectural details to focus on, views through windows and contrasting levels in the ruins.

Then circling back to Old Malton Parish Church, which we've been frequently driving past, seemingly for years. We finally pulled in and went to see it up close. Post the Dissolution this was cobbled together into a Parish Church, out of the nave of a Gilbertine Monastery. Literally by slicing off the upper clerestory and the side aisles and blocking up the arches. And, similar to Binham Priory, you can tell as soon as you enter by the sort of architecture it contains, that this was never built to serve a local parish. It has an inappropriate level of immensity.  

The Gilbertines were the only entirely English monastic foundation, founded by St Gilbert of Sempringham in 1130. At their height there were around 26 priorys and abbeys in England. They were quite unusual, even in there day, in that they were quite often combined double foundations for both monks and nuns. Old Malton Parish church is a very lofty, oddly truncated sacred space, with a darkly sombre mood to it. If this were weather it would be called overcast. 

When I get back I'll write further about this in a Church Larking post. But first there comes tomorrow's return journey.