Dr John Burton included Rievaulx in his Monasticon Eboracense of 1758, recording not only its history but also telling of Thomas Duncombe’s new terrace and the views it provided. (1) Arthur Young visited the site in 1768, but his description was simply an appreciation of the ruin in its landscape, though the site was ‘a little paradise’. (2)
Travellers were followed by painters, including Girtin, Flaxman, Cotman, Cuitt, Richardson, and Turner. Their record of the ruin in its landscape confirms that the site had reached its current degree of ruination by the 1770s. It was the picturesque that brought visitors (including William and Mary Wordsworth on their wedding day in 1802). (3)
In their turn, painters and poets gave way to antiquaries. John Chessell Buckler (1793–1894) was at Rievaulx in 1809, 1810 and 1811, not simply to admire the ruins but to measure and draw them.
He was preparing a book on 'Cistercian Architecture' in which Rievaulx was to feature prominently. (4) While he was recording for posterity at Rievaulx, its owner, Lord Feversham, was removing floor tiles from the presbytery to decorate the floors of his Ionic Temple on the terrace above. (5)
Though Buckler failed to publish, one of his associates did, and Rievaulx was the only product to appear in a series on the abbeys and castles of Yorkshire that combined the picturesque with scholarship in 1820. (6)
The high point in the recording of Rievaulx came with the publication of William Richardson’s 'Monastic Ruins of Yorkshire' in 1844. (7) At about the same time, artistic depiction gave way to draughtsmanship, with Edmund Sharpe working from long ladders he recorded the presbytery to compare it accurately with similar buildings. (8)
Rievaulx Abbey was exceptional in not being excavated by antiquaries in the second half of the 19th century because the earls of Feversham would not allow it. They were also reluctant to repair the rapidly failing ruins, leading to appeals to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in 1900 and the Office of Works (the predecessor of English Heritage) in 1911, both leading to some repair.
Sir William St John Hope, the leading monastic archaeologist of the period, was obliged to undertake his magisterial study of the ruins without recourse to excavation. (9) Excavation was discussed between the marquis of Granby and Lord Feversham and was to begin ‘after the war’.
The marquis of Granby was to acquire many of the floor tiles from the church which now form an important part of the British Museum’s collection of medieval floor tiles. However, Lord Feversham was killed in the battle of the Somme in 1916 and it was to be Sir Charles Peers, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, who was to oversee the clearance and repair of the abbey when it passed into state care in that year.
The site as it exists is very much the creation of Sir Charles Peers, whose main concern was to remove all fallen material and conserve what remained in place, recovering a plan of the abbey’s central buildings while maintaining the surviving elevation.
His guide to the site is the only overview he published. (10) He did, however, publish two unusual aspects of the site, the incorporation of relics in altars, (11) and St William’s shrine in the chapter house. (12) The more mundane recording was left to William Harvey, an architectural assistant, whose recording of the excavation of the Romanesque nave provides the evidence for its paper reconstruction. (13)
The clearance of the site produced thousands of objects, fallen stonework, window glass, pottery and metalwork that were carefully curated and slowly published. (14) The 1980s and 1990s saw the completion of the basic interpretation of the surviving ruins, (15) the analysis of charter evidence that provided the economic base for building, (16) and the understanding of the process of suppression and demolition. (17)
A major research programme began in 1991, directed by Professor Peter Fergusson of Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and funded by the American National Endowment for the Humanities, Wellesley College, and English Heritage.
It re-examined the work undertaken by Peers, the collection of architectural material recovered in clearing the site and the published and unpublished documentary evidence. This programme has established Rievaulx’s international significance as a major monastery and a monastery of the Cistercian order. (18)
Peers’ guide, revised many times, was not replaced until 1986, and English Heritage produced new guides in 1994 and 2006 that reflect our rapidly expanding understanding of the site. (19) That knowledge is still far from complete, however.
While the general development of Rievaulx Abbey is well understood, there are a number of areas in which further work is highly desirable.
English Heritage is currently working on the sites of the home grange of Griff, work which couples with surviving 16th century documents; and work is being undertaken by the English Heritage Collections team to re-create a catalogue of the finds from the clearance of the site in the 1920s, to the extent that we can start the full study of those finds.
It is hoped that some of this work will help in addressing the following questions:
1. What form did Abbot William’s temporary monastery take? Its potential church below the later cloister remains untested archaeologically, yet it is of critical importance to the understanding of the earliest Cistercian architecture, and no other buildings have been traced.
2. Aelred’s great church at Rievaulx was constructed of rubble walling and ashlar dressings. The ashlar dressings are all marked on the exposed face with a Roman numeral, many of which can still be seen in situ, and many elements in store also have these numbers. Each number appears to relate to a particular template, but this has never been examined. This appears to be evidence for ‘kit building’, an explanation of the rapid construction of the 1150s and 60s buildings, but is it?
3. Rievaulx was heavily remodelled in the late 14th century (or possibly earlier) to suit changing liturgies and life-styles, yet the principle guiding research to date has been to reconstruct the 12th and 13th century buildings. How does the site reflect Cistercian life in the later Middle Ages, what were buildings actually used for, and how do they relate to 16th century descriptions?
4. A description exists of all the fittings of the church still in place early in 1539. To what extent does this show how the church was used in the late Middle Ages?
5. The whole of the precinct at Rievaulx survives in meadowland and parts at least of the home granges of Griff and Newleys have been surveyed. What does this historic landscape, surviving principally as pasture, tell us about the developing economy of the abbey? And what else can we learn from comparing these remains with such historical sources as the suppression-period rental list of grange lands and the unpublished rental list of the abbey’s demesne estates in Bilsdale and Raisdale, land first granted in 1145?
(1) Burton, J 1758. 'Monasticon Eboracense', York, 560.
(2) Young, A 1771. 'A Six Month's Tour through the North of England', II, London, 83.
(3) Moorman, M (ed) 1980. 'The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth', Oxford, 156.
(4) The book was never published but the manuscript in three volumes was presented to the British Museum Library in 1867: British Library MS 27, fols 763–65, with the Rievaulx material appearing in Vol 2, fols 30 and 45. Additional Rievaulx drawings by Buckler can be found in British Library Add MS 36395, fols 75b–94b (drawings of the transepts, presbytery, and gate chapel) and Add MS 36402, fol 54 (plan of the presbytery).
(5) Fergusson, P, and Harrison, S 1999. 'Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture, Memory', New Haven and London, 191.
(6) Whitaker, T D 1820. 'A Series of Views of the Abbeys and Castles in Yorkshire, Drawn and Engraved by W Westall ARA and F Mackenzie with Historical and Descriptive Accounts by Thomas Dunham Whitaker', I, London.
(7) Richardson, W 1844. 'The Monastic Ruins of Yorkshire from drawings by William Richardson, archt., with historical descriptions by Edward Churton', I and II, York.
(8) Sharpe, E 1848. 'Architectural Parallels; or the Progress of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England', London.
(9) Hope, W H St J 'Rievaulx Abbey' in Page, W (ed) 1914. 'Victoria History of the County of Yorkshire: North Riding III', London.
(10) Peers, C R 1928. 'Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire', London.
(11) Peers, C R 1921. 'Two Relic Holders from Altars in the Nave of Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire', Antiquaries Journal I, 271–82.
(12) Peers, C R 1929. 'Rievaulx Abbey: The Shrine in the Chapter House', Archaeological Journal, 86, 20–8.
(13) Harvey, W 1921. 'Nave Excavations: Rievaulx Abbey', The Builder (12 August), 196–7.
(14) For instance Dunning, G C 1952. 'A lead Ingot from Rievaulx Abbey', Antiquaries Journal 32, 53–63; and 1965. 'Heraldic and Decorated Metalwork and other Finds from Rievaulx Abbey', Antiquaries Journal 45, 53–63.
(15) Fergusson, P, and Harrison, S 1999. 'Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture, Memory', New Haven and London; Coppack, G 1998. 'Rievaulx Abbey', in Robinson, D (ed), 'The Cistercian Abbeys of Britain: Far from the Concourse of Men', London, 160–4.
(16) Burton, J 1998. 'The Estates and Economy of Rievaulx abbey in Yorkshire', Cȋteaux: commentarii cisterciences, 49, 29–94.
(17) Coppack, G 1986. 'Some Descriptions of Rievaulx Abbey in 1538-9: the Disposition of a Major Cistercian Precinct in the Early Sixteenth Century', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 139, 46–87.
(18) Fergusson, P, and Harrison, S 1999. 'Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture, Memory', New Haven and London.
(19) Coppack, G and Fergusson, P 1994. 'Rievaulx Abbey', London; Fergusson, P, Coppack, G, and Harrison, S 2006. 'Rievaulx Abbey', London.
