Byland Abbey

The grand abbey entrance leading to:

In 1400, a monk of Byland Abbey chronicled how  James Tankerley, a dead priest, rose one night from his grave at the entrance of the abbey’s chapter house. The corpse then wandered into the nearby village of Cold Kirby, and there gouged out the eyes of his former mistress for reasons unexplained. The frightened monks promptly exhumed Tankerley’s body, which was thrown into Gormire Lake, a few miles away. 

It's a nice little ghost story and easy to believe when seeing the ruins of the abbey on a cold winter's night.  Not too hard to believe on wandering through the ruins on an overcast but hot summer's day. There was something about them that reminded me of Pompeii, easy to imagine ghosts lurked there still.

It began in 1177, when on the 31st  October, Cistercians arrived,  dedicating their lives to prayer and hard work. It had been a long journey, starting from the Cumbrian coast 43 years previously and involving several false starts, each time warfare and disputes forcing them to move on, until at last they settled in Byland and there built their abbey.

At the abbey’s  height in the early C13th there were 80 monks and 160 largely illiterate lay brothers who served God with their labour, while the monks sang and praised God in Latin. Monks and lay brothers were strictly segregated, the monks residing in the eastern part of the abbey, the lay brothers occupying the buildings to the west. 

Peace was shattered when Scottish soldiers sacked the abbey after defeating the army of King Edward II at the battle  of Old Byland. According to some medieval sources, King Edward who was at the abbey at the time of the battle, fled in panic when he heard of the defeat. No surprise there.

After that, little changed until 1538 when the monastery was dissolved, the 25 remaining monks were pensioned off and the great buildings left to decay.

It's very easy to wander through ruins, 

harder to work out their meaning and purpose. 

The illustration was a great help, enabling us to locate the east wing where the monks lived and the west wing where the lay brothers were quartered. If you zoom in, you can see how easy it was to locate the most important parts of the abbey.

The Chapter House

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Built in the late C12th. The Chapter House was where the monks gathered for their daily meeting. It would begin with the reading of a chapter from the Rule of St Benedict – a feature of all monastic life – and giving the building its name. Here the dead were commemorated, sins confessed, business done and distinguished guests received. It is believed that a memorial to Sir Roger de Mowbray, the founder of the abbey, was built under one of the niches in the eastern end of the building. Roger himself died on crusade in 1187, his body remaining in the Holy Land. 

The Cloister

The most important buildings of the monastery were arranged around the cloister, it’s central open square planted with fruit trees.

Byland Abbey boasted one of the largest Cistercian cloisters in England, an indication of the size of the community, which in its C13th heyday comprised as many as 240 monks and lay brothers. 

The quiet and seclusion of the cloister made it an ideal location for contemplation and was interpreted by monks as a form of earthly paradise.

On each side of the central square were covered walkways. Here, silence was strictly enforced. The north walkway was used for reading and copying manuscripts, the others  used for religious processions on Sundays and important holy days. 

What was truly amazing was that so much of the original tiling remains intact. You can almost hear the scuff and hiss of Cistercian feet. 

The Refectory and South Range.

Built in the late C12th, the refectory was where the monks dined together as a community. Meals were eaten in silence while listening to a spiritual reading from the pulpit, which would have been in a recess in the west wall. The monks sat at tables around the edges of the building and communicated using sign language.

The diet was healthy by vegetarian standards at least: hot thick soup  and vegetables like peas and beans with bread and ale. Meat was forbidden, but fish, eggs and cheese were allowed on special occasions. Food was served  through a hatch. The refectory, shown in the picture above, was on the first floor and accessed from the cloister by a short flight of stairs. Its position may have been a deliberate attempt to reflect the Upper Room in the New Testament where the Last Supper of Christ and his apostles was supposed to have been held.

And finally, all good things necessarily coming to an end, it was time to go—albeit with a further and more profound disappointment.

The pub opposite the Abbey was closed. 

Rosedale

Rosedale is a very pretty name and might have been even prettier when in earlier times it was connected to Europe by a land bridge and covered in dense forest. Celts and Romans left their mark as did the Saxons. In the C9th the Vikings arrived and may well have given Rosedale its name. Forget any image of a dale smothered in roses. Some believe it derives from Rossi which could be the name of a chieftain. Rossi also means horse. Then again it could come from ‘Rhos’ meaning moor, which had long since replaced virgin forest. 

In ll58 a Cistercian nunnery was founded, which is remarkable in itself, for the Cistercians were essentially a male order with a profound distrust of women and, indeed they seem to have been treated by their male counterparts with little respect. They were reprimanded for financial mismanagement, urged to give less to the poor in order to avoid bankruptcy. They were told off for allowing visitors into their dormitory, and warned against allowing puppies into the church lest they disturb the service. 

In 1535 the nunnery was dissolved along with other Catholic institutions as Henry and his minions went on their own distinctive property spree.

From then on, Rosedale slumbered, though the sheep remained. 

Then in the 1850’s everything changed. A rich seam of high grade magnetic iron stone was discovered and the population of Rosedale rose from around five hundred to three thousand in two decades.

Now, surrounded by heather and sky, it’s hard to imagine these bleak moorlands once resounded to the clanging of hammers; the air clouded in smoke, the nights glowing in fire. Giant kilns were constructed where the iron stone was purified;  track and rail lines were built built connecting the mines to the kilns, and then later to nearby Battersby from where the purified  product went to the furnaces of Middlesbrough and the Tyne. At its height, 300,000 tonnes a year was being processed, Chimney Top resembling one of those early ‘gold rush towns’ in America. 

A rail track bed snaking its way acrosss the moors. Ideal now for walking.

Twenty-nine years later the great ‘iron rush’ had ended, the seams now exhausted. And peace returned to the moors.  Peace and rain. We'd walked two miles or so along the track, taking the occasional photo. The cloud in the picture below took offence and followed us, shedding its load as we ran back to the car - in my case less a run than an inelegant stumble. Not a pretty sight. Within moments we were drenched. How I longed to dry my jeans alongside a once fiery furnace. Instead we had pictures of clouds.

Wilfrid's Place

 

We were driving past Ripon racecourse when I saw it, The Blackamoor Inn. We both did a doubletake, like all of us sensitised to the latest taboo. It’s hard to believe that such a sign would last long in some parts of Britain, when even ‘The Saracen’s Head’ is deemed controversial. 

By coincidence, it seemed, we saw The Blackamoor again, this time in Ripon Cathedral. What was going on? I remembered the stick Princess Michael got for wearing Blackamoor jewellery once terribly fashionable and still commanding high prices in many parts of Europe. 

 I asked a very nice lady in Ripon Cathedral that same question. ‘What’s going on?’ And like everything in history, things are not black and white. The Blackamoor held pride of place in an C18th stained glass window and was apparently part of the cathredal’s coat of arms, not out of frivolity or exoticism but because he—a family servant—had dived into a swollen river and rescued the son and heir of the local landed family.

The lady confessed that at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, cathedral authorities had been extremely worried. Might this too be a target? Let’s face it, cathedral windows have long been a target for iconoclasts. 

Another stained glass window portrayed the man who founded Ripon Cathedral: Saint Wilfred. One wonders what he would think of such things.

The name Wilfrid is an old English word meaning one who ‘Desires Peace,’ or ‘Peaceful Ruler’. (Wil or desire and Frid or peace.) Wilfrid in fact was far from peaceful, causing dissent wherever he went. It’s debatable as to whether he was a saint but probably gained the honour, much like a dodgy OBE because he championed Rome and the Roman way of doing things against the indigenous Celtic Church.

Whatever the case, he founded Ripon Cathedral in 672 A.D, in the form of a small Roman basilica. The original crypt still stands, the oldest in Britain. The cathedral was rebuilt, in largely its present form, during the C12th. A tower was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1450 and extra naves added in the early C16th.

Sir Thomas Markenfield  born c.1340 d.1398, fought in the Hundred Years War.  His effigy lies here in the Markenfield chantry chapel on east side of the north transept.

A rood screening the High Altar. Bishops to the left, three random kings to the right

I think St Wilfrid would be impressed. From this

The original crypt of 672 AD

To this

The High Altar and stained glass window - worth zooming in for

The Hidcote Pasty

 

We went to Hidcote on the hottest day of the year. 

The gardens were beautiful, the perfect setting for strawberries, Pimms, and cucumber sandwiches. I though was there for its pasties. 

I’m a huge fan of the Cornish pasty, the perfect food. I could be as rich as Croesus and I’d still forgo filet mignon, lobster, and foi gras for a Cornish pasty.

Squirrels remember their nuts, dogs where they've buried a bone. Some people, especially the incontinent, remember toilets, their location and how far away they are from them. I remember the location of pasties. 

You can buy a fine Cornish pasty at Paddington Station. Tredegar House in Newport sells a good pasty. But to my mind the Hidcote pasty is the finest of all. So inspired was I by it, that I asked the kitchen where they bought them, wrote it down on a piece of paper and lost it two days later. 

The Cornish pasty must never be salty. It must though be peppery. That is essential. But how to eat it?

At Hidcote, I was momentarily flummoxed when they presented it with a knife and fork. I had told them firmly I wanted no green stuff with it. A plain white plate if they insisted. 

But when I sat down, I found myself surrounded by the middle-aged, the genteel and a group of elderly Americans—all of them using the cutlery provided.

Talk about peer pressure.

But the pasty is tactile, meant to be handled – it’s what the lumpy end bit is for, an inbuilt handle allowing you  to stuff the other end into your mouth – or in my case nibble. 

But the peer pressure, those sharp eyed old ladies. I temporarily succumbed out of pragmatism more than anything else. It was just too damn hot, scalding my teeth as I bit into it. Back on the plate it went, the knife and fork proving surprisingly useful in cooling it down while I drank a small pot of tea.

But the joy of taking up the pasty again, pushing plate and cutlery to one side. 

Hidcote is great for flowers, not too sure about its vegan scones, but the pasty is wonderful.

 

 

The Headless

Ely Cathedral is more than a place of worship, it’s also a repository of early English and Norman history. Beneath the glow of stained glass, exploring niches and chapels, you absorb more than you fully realise, the process addictive

One of my favourites was St Edmund’s Chapel 

Edmund was a C9th king of East Anglia, killed by the Danes in 870 for refusing to renounce the Christian faith. Tradition says that the Danes shot him with arrows and beheaded him for good measure. Legend also claims that a wolf found and protected the royal head until his friends arrived. 

The last resting place of the relics of Saxon Christians of the 10^th and 11^th Centuries

There is also a space dedicated to early Saxon benefactors and a once famous hero, one now largely forgotten. I was going to skip the Saxon worthies, largely bishops, but then I fell madly in love with their names:

Wulfstan Archbishop of York, died 1023; Osmund, a Swedish Bishop died 1067; Aelfwine, Bishop of Elmham, died 1021; Aelfgar, Bishop of Elmham, died 1021; Eadnoth, Bishop of Dorchester, died 1016; Aethelstan, Bishop of Elham died 996; Bryhtnoth, Eoldorman of East Anglia, died 991

Bryhtnoth is of particular import, being the famous Saxon hero who fought the Danes to the death—his final battle is commemorated in the well-known Old English poem, The Battle of Maldon. It was quite a battle.  His chest contains a headless skeleton. 

 

The Old English version with subtitles

 

 The Lady Chapel

 

                                     The mirror below allows a close up reflection of the ceiling—see below

 

The Lady Chapel is dedicated to Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus. It is the largest chapel of its kind attached to any British Cathedral. Its foundations were laid in 1321 and it was completed in 1348.

High up on the ceiling you can see carvings or ‘bosses’ dating back to the C14th. They are rich in imagery depicting foliage, human faces, animals and mythical creatures. The roof is also decorated with roses. My wife, being from Yorkshire, was a bit miffed by the paucity of white roses, I think I counted only two. Being Lancastrian, I was reasonably content with the sheer number of red roses until I realised the issue was meaningless, since the Chapel was completed in 1348, a hundred years or more before the War of the Roses began. 

What then do the roses signify? I accosted a tour-guide who gavely informed me that he already had a tour in tow and I wasn’t part of it. Scousers haven’t yet learnt the meaning of no, so I persisted with the question. He relented with courtesy, saying he was just about to inform his group on that same topic. The red rose is associated with Mary as Queen of Heaven and is a symbol of her great love. The white rose is associated with Mary’s virginity, and so is a symbol of her purity.

In this context, the ceiling reflects Mary’s greater glory as Queen of Heaven, the two white roses reminding us of her purity. There are hidden continents of symbols lost to us now but familiar to the medieval Christian pilgrim. 

 

By the C14th, Mary had become an important focus of people’s devotions, especially women. The elaborate carvings around the walls depicted the Virgin Mary’s story, and pilgrims would have used these to aid their prayers.

 

And then came the Reformation and the insufferable Dean Goodrich; religious buildings and art were defaced or demolished. The majestic, rich interior of Ely’s Lady Chapel was a particular target for damage. Today, the rawness of the Lady Chapel, is a direct result of the legacy from that time; the empty wall niches, headless statues and faint traces of paint, are all that survive. Although, if you look hard, one statue survived the carnage along with its head.

 

After 1556, the Lady Chapel became Holy Trinity Church and was used as a parish church for the people of Ely. The walls were whitewashed and its stained windows replaced with plain glass. I'm sure God was delighted.