Byland Abbey

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it has been a terrible summer in England. Worse than the average English summer, and with thankfully breaks in the clouds and rain, especially for most of the Olympics. However, the weather has been less than kind, and so it is with surprise I notice the trees already starting to turn their colours and faces to Autumn. Somehow it seems wrong when we have not really even finished a decent Spring; it feels like we are moving straight from winter to autumn with only a passing nod to other seasons between. It has been a Narnian year, always winter and never Christmas. 

So when the weather did set fair for a day and that day was a Saturday, it was only right and proper that we should take full and unrestricted advantage of the fact and go for an afternoon jaunt. So off to Byland Abbey, one of the “three shining lights” of North Yorkshire, we went. 

We are so fortunate in this part of the country to be surrounded by ruins. By fortunate, of course, I mean from a selfish point of view that I like poking about in ruined architecture. Presumably the monks and nuns of the 1530s did not feel in their hearts that the dissolution of the monasteries was tragic but at least there was a silver lining for students of antiquity in future generations. No doubt they did not feel that at all. 

My mother had a phrase for these particular remnants of history – they were places “Cromwell knocked about a bit”. As a child I was confused because I thought warty old Oliver might have quite liked religious places (although now I suspect he wouldn’t have approved of the great religious houses either); I didn’t hear about Thomas Cromwell, his forebear, until later. Once I had, it seemed a little unfair to blame him for Henry VIII’s obsessions, but I suppose that is the way of it – the ruling class like to have a minister or civil servant to blame.

Cromwell certainly knocked Byland Abbey about a bit. Established originally by the Savignac order in 1135, Byland was not settled until 1177, by which time the Savignacs had been subsumed into the rival Cistercian order. The Abbey lasted almost 400 years until its surrender to rapacious earthly powers in 1538. 

We visited on a beautiful day with the kind of October light that makes me click-happy on the camera; long shadows and golden reflections off the stonework, with hazy vistas of trees and hills, sheep and farms as a backdrop to the wistful remains of the formerly powerful and hopefully inspiring Abbey. Ruins are romantic in many respects, but in the autumn they are doubly so. 

The entrance to the church is huge, with the lower half of the incredible rose window forming a half-crescent above. As I tried to reconstruct the building in my mind’s eye I was amazed to think how much higher the entrance would have gone, completing that rose circle and adding on the finishing touches. Then I realised this was not even the tallest part of the structure. That was at the further end above the High Altar. I sat on a bench in what had been the lay brothers’ choir and added the roof and columns, painted the walls and excavated the floor (there are incredible mosaics there too). It was beautiful, and without doubt, rich. No wonder Thomas and ‘Enery wanted all that money for the Crown. When you have wars to fight, who wants masses of gold sitting with a bunch of monks chanting all day? Even in a superstitious age it would seem common sense to redirect that money to the coffers and let the monks chant in more basic accommodation, or else let them turn to more practical uses and worship the presence of God while they worked. 

It is a peaceful place still, in the quiet of the Yorkshire countryside, still a rural community surrounded by sheep and farms, hills and trees, the timeless accompaniment of English tradition.  The traumas of history have been subsumed by the greater sense of peace and devotion practised for centuries until they seeped into the earth. It is a privilege to be able to share that experience on a sunny October day.

Shadows

You might need to be sitting down for this. It’s a bit of a shock, and it made me feel quite queasy when I heard about it.

Did you know it might be the case that Yorkshire does not exist? Yes, I know, unthinkable. It may be that it exists only in the Platonic ideal, say, or as a perfect thought in the mind of God. God’s Own County, whose history can be traced back to within nano-seconds of the Big Bang, may be no more than a collective dream of something better than the humdrum of motley human existence.

The proposal for this thesis arose as a result of thinking about government boundary changes, an exciting field for fertile rational debate and a regular subject of passionate and informed conversation across the nation. But take, for example, this anomaly: that until it became a Unitary Authority in 1996, the city of York (happy 800^th, by the way) was part of North Yorkshire County. This immediately raises questions about the status of West and South Yorkshire, since the capital had originally been found at the meeting point of the three Ridings, at once within all and none.

Yorkshire owes much of its history to the Danish and Vikings, although before them it was part of the Kingdom of Deira. King Aelle was the first recorded Anglo-Saxon King in 559 AD before it merged with Bernicia to form the greater region of Northanhumber. The name, however, is derived from the British people who lived there before the invasion, generally transcribed as “Deywr”.  

The Romans had founded York (Eboracum) in 71 AD as the northern capital on the boundary of Brigantes’ territory, until their garrison was recalled to Rome around 412 AD. The Angles colonised and subjugated the area soon after and when Northanhumber was finally stabilised the capital was at Eoferwic, formerly Eboracum. Over time and through numerous bloody invasions, the name transformed to Yorvik, then York.

The Danish dominance and later the harrying of the North no doubt influenced the development of Yorkshire identity. Historic county boundaries were established by the Norman administration, and based largely on Anglo-Saxon shires, including Yorkshire (hence the infamous Norman role of Sherriff, or shire-reeve).

None of these entities are real, in that they are all ephemeral to the eye of History: but what we call “real” in these parts are the (North, East and West) Ridings and the Ainsty, long abolished but living on in the hopes and dreams of true-born Yorkshire men and women. I share their pain, being a native daughter of Middlesex which ancient desmesne suffered the same fate of abolition in 1974 and was parcelled out between Surrey and so-called “Greater” London. We know it still exists, in the shadows, biding its time. It still has a cricket club, as does Yorkshire, so it must be true.

The outside edge of Yorkshire remains more or less intact, beyond occasional boundary issues. How it is broken up internally is in the end an administrative matter reflecting but minimally on the soul of the shire. While it may no longer exist in its ancient form according to the clerks and scribes, I respectfully submit, in response to the controversial thesis proposed above, that Yorkshire is as real as any great idea, such as liberty, equality, peace or justice.