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.