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.