Rievaulx Abbey

The history of the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx, in whose Chartulary the name Farndale was first recorded in 1154

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There is a Rievaulx Chronology, with references to source material.

If you’d like to visit Rievaulx Abbey, here are some notes to help you.

The founding of Rievaulx

The Cistercian order of white monks was founded at Cîteaux, near Dijon, in France, on 21 March 1098. The monks had come from the Benedictine monastery of Molesme which had been founded by a group of hermits who had sought a more austere lifestyle, but which aspirations had been lost as Molesme had matured.

In the remote forest of Citeaux, the monks agreed to a new approach, with simpler clothing, bedding, diet and building structures. They paid particular attention to Chapter 73 of the Rule which sought inspiration from the Desert Fathers and the early monks of Thebaid.

Stephen Harding, from Dorset, became their third abbot. In 1111 Stephen sent a group of 12 monks to start a daughter house in Chalon sur Saône in La Ferté, founded on 13 May 1113. In 1112, a charismatic Burgundinian nobleman, Bernard arrived at Cîteaux with 35 of his relatives and friends to join the monastery. Bernard led twelve other monks to found the Abbey of Clairvaux, where he cleared the ground and built a church and dwelling.

Cîteaux soon had four daughter houses at Pontigny, Morimond, La Ferté and Clairvaux.

With Bernard's influence, the Cistercian order began a period of international expansion. As his fame grew, the Cistercian movement grew with it. The order spread rapidly across Europe.

This new monastic restoration was part of European monastic reform movements of the twelfth century, which placed an emphasis on a return to an austere life and literal observance of the rules set out for monastic life by St Benedict in the 6th century. These were not protests against the Rule of St Benedict, but against how the rules had come to be interpreted since the sixth century.

The rigour of Cistercian religious life was the basis of its success. The order sought to live according to the purest possible interpretation of the rule of Benedict. Their services were dignified but simple, allowing more time for reading and manual work. The Order’s art and architecture was austere. The Cistercians followed an ideal of manual labour as part of their objective of self-sufficiency. This was an attempt at isolation from the secular world.

The Cistercians first came to England in 1128, first appearing at Waverley Abbey, Surrey, founded by William Gifford, Bishop of Winchester. It was colonised with 12 monks and an abbot from Aumone in France. By 1187 there were 70 monks and 120 lay brothers at Waverley.

Walter Espec, a prominent military figure, Lord of nearby Helmsley Castle and a royal justiciar, founded the Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx in 1131. Espec was a huge man with a penetrating voice. He was an active supporter of ecclesiastical reform and had founded Kirkham Priory for the reformist Augustinian canons in about 1121. At about this time a breakaway group from St Mary’s Abbey in York established Fountains Abbey.

From its position on the River Rye, the new Cistercian monastery became known as Rievaulx, which later also gave its name to Ryedale.

William was the founding Abbott from 1131 to 1145, with twelve monks. The continuous and monotonous round of prayer and study, separated from the outside world, attracted folk from elite classes of society.

The first buildings at Rievaulx were temporary wooden structures.

William dispatched colonies to establish daughter houses at Warden in Bedfordshire and Melrose in 1136, Dundrennan in 1142 and Revesby in 1143.

An earlier monastery was founded at Melrose by Aidan of Lindisfarne. King David I wanted the new abbey to be built on the same site, but the Cistercians chose a new site with better land. It was said to have been built in ten years. Its first community came from Rievaulx Abbey.

An early agreement was reached between the monks of Rievaulx and the canons of Augustinian Kirkham Priory. Kirkham was to cede to Rievaulx the whole of Kirkham, with its church and associated lands, a wagon and 100 sheep. In return Rievaulx as patron was to give them alternate land at Linton and Hwersletorp. The prior of Rievaulx and his sui auxilarii (assistants) were to build them a church and other monastic offices on this new land. It seems that it was intended that Kirkham should become Cistercian, with Rievaulx as its mother house. Those who disliked this arrangement were to have a new house built for them elsewhere. Walter Espec was still alive when the agreement was drawn up. He preferred the Cistercian order and indeed became a monk at Rievaulx later in his life. It seems that Espec wished that his three foundations, Kirkham, Rievaulx, and Warden should be of the Cistercian order. The agreement, however, fell through.

The early white monks laboured in the fields, diverted streams through monastic water-systems, hauled timber from the woodlands, and spent significant time in physical, non-scholarly activities, scheduled to alternate with the appointed hours of formal religious devotions.

The choir monks’ day was structured around the celebration of eight daily services in the church which were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Reading was an important part of the monastic day. Time was also set aside for manual work including copying manuscripts.

Lay brothers formed part of the monastic community. Mostly literate, they had their own daily routine of short church services and work on the Abbey estates. In the later Middle Ages servants replaced the lay brothers.

The arrival of the reform-minded Rievaulx community sent shockwaves through the older Benedictine houses of the north. The foundation at Rievaulx was carefully planned by Bernard of Clairvaux to spearhead the monastic colonisation and reformation of northern Britain.

In the late 1130s Abbot William began the construction of stone buildings around the present cloister. The northern part of his west range, which housed the abbey’s lay brothers, still survives, as does a fragment of the south range.

It was not long before individual monasteries began to engage commercially with the secular world beyond their boundaries. Although the new monastery was given limited land by its founder, it soon received other donations of land of considerable extent and value, so that within half a century from the foundation of the abbey it had acquired possession of some 50 carucates of land besides other property. The number of monks who first came to Rievaulx must have largely exceeded the number usually sent to form a new convent, and Rievaulx came to be a source from which other Cistercian monasteries might develop.

Aelred

Aelred was the son of Eilaf, a priest from Hexham. He was a Northumbrian of old English descent raised at court in Scotland. Aelred had become a steward in the court of David I of Scotland. During a visit to Yorkshire he was welcomed at Walter Espec’s castle at Helmsley and was taken to meet the monks at Rievaulx. As a young man he joined Rievaulx as a postulant in 1134.

Abbot William made him a member of the Council and he was sent on diplomatic missions including to Rome. He became novice master of a community which quickly grew to about 300. He then became abbot of Revesby in Lincolnshire, a daughter house of Rievaulx. Five years later in 1147, he became abbot of Rievaulx. He continued as abbot until his death in 1167.

Aelred was a significant writer and biblical scholar. At its height in the mid twelfth century (exactly the time of the Farndale interest) Rievaulx was home to 140 monks and 500 lay brothers and servants. Spiritually and architecturally Rievaulx was the most important Cistercian Abbey in England.

Aelred wrote extensively. He described the abbey lifestyle.

Our food is scanty, our garments rough, our drink is from the stream and our sleep is often upon our books. Under old tired limbs there is but a hard mat. When sleep is sweetest, we must rise at the bell’s bidding. Self will has no scope. There is no moment for idleness or dissipation. Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity, and marvellous freedom from the tumult of the world. To put all in brief, no perfection expressed in the words of the gospel or of the apostles or in the writings of the fathers, or in the sayings of the monks of old is wanting to our order and our way of life.

The monk Walter Daniel, a contemporary of Aelred, wrote a biography of his Abbot, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx. This described how under Aelred’s compassionate leadership Rievaulx became “the home of party and peace, the abode of perfect love of God and neighbour.” Aelred’s vision of monasticism was founded on a spiritual love for his fellow monks.

Monasticism evolved considerably during the Middle Ages. The Abbey 's magnificent buildings provide evidence of these changes. Spiritually and architecturally Rievaulx was the most important Cistercian Abbey in England.

This increase in numbers required much larger buildings. Many of the standing buildings today date from Aelred’s rule. A monumental church was begun in the late 1140s, one of the earliest great mid twelfth century Cistercian churches in Europe.

Rievaulx attracted the support of important benefactors, many of whom were buried here. They believed that burial at the Abbey and prayers of the monks would hasten the passage of their souls through purgatory to heaven.

The abbey lies in a wooded dale by the River Rye, sheltered by hills. The monks diverted part of the river several yards to the west in order to have enough flat land to build on. They altered the course of the river twice more during the twelfth century. The old course is visible in the grounds of the abbey. This is an illustration of the technical ingenuity of the monks, who over time built up a profitable business mining lead and iron ore, rearing sheep and selling wool to buyers from all over Europe.

Rievaulx was the hub of a trade network but extended as far as Italy. Fleeces from the Abbey’s flocks were highly prized and Rievaulx became wealthy.

Abbot Aelred's monastery at Rievaulx in the mid Twelfth Century

Aelred was credited with several characteristics associated with saints including an ability to perform miraculous cures. Rievaulx monks regarded Aelred as a saint almost from the moment of his death in 1167.

Economic activity

Like other monastic orders, the monastery at Rievaulx accepted gifts of land on which to build their monastery, farm sheep for wool and grow food, or from which to extract minerals, quarry stone and retrieve timber for building and repairs. However, initially at least, they would accept only undeveloped land because managing tenanted land would entail an engagement with the secular world which monastic isolation was designed to avoid.

Significant land grants were given to the monasteries. Rievaulx soon had a great swathe of properties, throughout Ryedale and stretching to Teesmouth and Filey.

In 1143 Roger de Mowbray granted Old Byland to the convent of monks who had left Calder, intending that they should build their monastery on the south side of the River Rye, but the site was too near Rievaulx, and each house heard the bells of the other. The monks of Byland moved further off, but the lands of the two houses were still close, and to avoid possible disputes an agreement was entered into between Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, and Roger, Abbot of Byland, in about 1154. This agreement began by a mutual engagement of masses and prayers for deceased brothers of the two houses and a combined strategy for protection against oppression or misfortune by fire. The agreement then defined the relations of the two houses regarding their adjoining lands, both in the immediate vicinity of the two houses and their properties at a distance, where they adjoined each other. As to the homelands, the Byland monks conceded to their brethren of Rievaulx that they should have their bridge so constructed that it should hold back the wood they conveyed by the River Rye, and also a road from the bridge through the wood and field of Byland to a place called Hestelsceit, 18 feet in width, which the monks of Byland were to keep in repair. They were to have mutual rights on each others' banks of the river.

Over time Rievaulx received grants of land totalling 6,000 acres. Most grants of common pasture to the monasteries were made early. Rievaulx soon acquired land in Welburn (1138 to 1143); Wombleton (1145 to 1152); Farndale (pre 1155). Some grants of sheep pasture were very large and caused the monastery to set up their granges nearby.

The name Farndale, first occurs in history in the Rievaulx Abbey Chartulary in a Charter granted by Roger de Mowbray to the Abbot and the monks of Rievaulx Abbey in 1154. By it Roger bestowed upon the Monastery, ‘….Midelhovet, that clearing in Farndale where the hermit Edmund used to dwell; and another clearing which is called ‘Duvanesthuat’ and common of pasture in the same valley of Farndale….’

The monks had a large area given to them at Skiplam, north of Kirkdale, by Gundreda de Mowbray. This allowed for expansion since it was this grant that included Farndale Head and Bransdale, about 18 square miles of dale pasture land.

In some areas the monks might not have been clearing new land in an area entirely unused. Although the extent of existing settlement and cultivation was small, it had existed in some of these places. Some of the land might have gone out of cultivation. The monks’ task would then have been one of reestablishment rather than the colonisation of new land.

At Skiplam the greater part of the area had never been settled for or tilled, but there is evidence that the monks began to work some areas of this land which had already or recently been cultivated. Gundreda’s grant, for instance included de culta terra (“of cultivated land”), as well as a grant ubi culta terra deficit versus aquilonem (“where the cultivated land declines towards the north”). Of course the subsequent work of the monks in all these places did result in a very great extension of the cultivated land. However the Cistercians, whilst solitaries, seem to have benefitted to some extent from previous lay efforts. In fact, it was largely the success or failure of lay farmers in a particular area which helped the monks to see the potentialities it offered them.

The granges had easy access to two types of pasture - moorland and valeland. Skiplam, for instance, had extensive pasture in the moorland dales, only a few miles north. There was the saltum (rough pasture) of Farndale Head and common pasture in Farndale and Bransdale. It had, too, the meadow of the clayland at its disposal. This was even nearer, being no more than three miles to the south. The plough teams from Skiplam could easily pasture at Welburn, where the monks had common pasture rights, or at Rook Barugh, Muscoates, and several other places, just as the animals from Griff went to Newton grange for pasture. The limestone hills had then a great deal to recommend them for the observant eyes of the monks.

The Cistercians became active farmers. During the twelfth century one of the gifts to Rievaulx was a pasture with sixty mares and their foals. As well as sheep, they were engaged in rearing pigs. Aelfred’s letters suggest that the monks grew flax which they made into linen at Rievaulx. There may have ben a tannery during Aelred’s abbacy.

In 1159 a rescript from Pope Alexander III to the Bishop of Exeter, the Abbot of St. Mary, York, and the Dean of York directed them to see that amends were made for the spoliation of the property of the abbey of Rievaulx by certain persons named. Strangely, the offenders were some of the chief benefactors of the abbey. Robert and William de Stuteville had been guilty of various acts of depredation, and the pope ordered that within thirty days they were to make restitution, under pain of excommunication. Seven other offenders are named, including Roger de Mowbray and his son Nigel.

By 1160 the Abbey was home to 640 men.

The accumulation of lands and rights by the monasteries was rapid. At Rievaulx, for example, the greater parts of the lands were acquired and a very large number of granges established by the end of the twelfth century. Even by 1170 the monks had required all Bilsdale, Pickering Marshes, the parts of Farndale and Bransdale, the Vills of Griff, Tileson, Stainton, Welburn, Hoveton, and the lands of Hummanby, Crosby, Morton, Wedbury, Allerston, Heslerton, Folkton, Willerby, Reighton.

Some donors had apparently not bargained for such a rapid increase in monastic possessions. It came as a shock to find that the monks were not “all that was simple and submissive; No greed, no self-interest …” The result was that men like Roger de Mowbray, Robert de Stuteville, Everard de Ros and other great Lords, formerly great donors and foundations, began unsuccessfully, to evict the monks from certain lands, but monastic expansion continued.

The Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx established ‘granges’, farms which they owned and managed themselves, where they grew food and raised sheep, cattle and horses, as well as producing various raw materials. Beyond supplying the monastic community at the mother house with its needs, they were expected to produce a surplus which could then be marketed to yield an income. The monks and lay brothers tended to site their granges away from villages. Monastic farms became a separate economic force. The sheep grange was dominant in Yorkshire with many examples, including at Farndale, of donations of rights to pasture a fixed number of sheep.

Traders in wool outside the monasteries were interested in buying up any surpluses the monks produced from their sheep-farming. Cistercian houses such as Byland Abbey began to deal in the market, and built ‘woolhouses’ where not only was wool stored but facilities were provided for merchants to come and inspect the monks’ surplus produce and negotiate their price. Byland Abbey, distinguished for its wool production, for a time maintained a woolhouse in York, a city which had mercantile links by the Ouse and Humber rivers to continental markets.

There was a Rievaulx woolhouse at Laskill north of Rievaulx at the mouth of Bilsdale.

The site was excavated in 1855. Water-leaf capital and corbel survivals suggest a late twelfth century date. The vaulted undercroft probably had a timber-roofed upper floor providing accommodation in season for visiting wool-buyers. Edward II visited the woohouse in the late summer of 1323, during a hunting trip, when it was described as Glascowollehous.

In around 1220 the east end of the church was rebuilt to provide a magnificent setting for Aelred’s mortal remains or relics. These were placed in a golden silver shrine, which stood on a beam above the high altar. The Abbey also possessed “a belt of Saint Aelred’, which was tied around the stomachs of local women during childbirth in the belief that it would aid their ease their pain and suffering.

Later History

In the early 13th century Rievaulx’s library contained 225 books mainly theological and monastic texts.

The period from about 1270 to 1400 was one of change and often difficulty. In the late 13th century epidemics devastated the abbeys flocks, leaving the monastery in debt.

Rievaulx was badly affected by warfare between England and Scotland and was pillaged by the Scots in 1322. The Battle of Byland took place on 14 October 1322 and must have greatly affected the two abbeys of Rievaulx and Byland, but nothing certainly is known as to what happened to Rievaulx in consequence of it. The encounter between the English and the Scots took place on the high ground between the two houses and near Byland. The English king was at Rievaulx and not Byland Abbey when he received news of the defeat of his army. He fled at once to York for safety, leaving, according to the chronicler of Lanercost, his silver plate and a great treasure behind him at Rievaulx. This fell into the hands of the Scots, et monasterium spoliaverunt.

The Black Death in the middle of the 14th century took a heavy toll. In 1380 there were only 15 monks and 3 lay brothers at Rievaulx.

In 1406 a glimpse of the life in the abbey was provided by a mandate of Pope Innocent VII, which stated that each monk in priest's orders was bound in turn for a week at a time to sing mass solemnly (alta voce ad notam) at the high altar, and to say the invitatory, such monks being called ebdomadarii, but that Thomas Beverley had an impediment of tongue, on account of which he could not do this becomingly, so he was granted a dispensation from performing the office.

The concluding years of Rievaulx were difficult. The abbot, Edward Kirkby, was not ready for impending religious charges against the monasteries. On 1 September 1533 the king's commissioners complained that Abbot Kirkby had written a letter ' to the slaundare of the kinges heygnes, and after the kynges lettars receivyed, dyd imprison and otharways punyche divers of hys brethren whyche ware ayenst him and hys dissolute liwing; also dyd take from one of the same, being a very agyd man, all hys money.' Further they complained that 'all the cuntre makythe exclamations of this Abbot of Rywax, uppon hys abhomynable liwing and extortions by hym commyttyd, also many wronges to divers myserable persens don, whyche evidently duthe apere by bylles corroboratt to be trwe with ther othes corporal, in the presens of the commissionars and the said abbott takyn, and opon the same xvi witnessys examynyd, affermyng ther exclamations to be trwe.' The commissioners concluded by stating that they had ' remowyed hym from the rewlle of hys abbacie and admynistration of the same.'

Rievaulx Abbey was shut down on 3 December 1538, as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. By this time Rievaulx’s community had shrunk to only 23 monks.

The monastery was sold to Thomas Manners (d1543), 1st Earl of Rutland, who was closely associated with the royal court. Rutland dismantled the buildings, reserving the roof leads and the bells for the King. His steward at nearby Helmsley, Ralf Bawde, recorded the process of dismantling, leaving remarkably detailed accounts of the process and the form and contents of individual buildings.

One of the buildings within the abbey precinct was called ‘the Yron Smiths’. Abbey records show that this was a water-powered forge used for making the many objects from iron for the monastery, from nails to tools and cutlery. Under Rutland the ironworks grew in scale. By 1545 enough iron ore was being smelted to keep four furnaces busy. The vaulted undercroft of the refectory was used as a dry place to store the charcoal used to heat up the ore to the temperature required to extract molten iron.

The ironworks continued to grow throughout the later sixteenth century, with the addition of a blast furnace in 1577, possibly the first in the north of England.

A new forge was built at the south end of the old monastic precinct, which was re-equipped between 1600 and 1612.

By the 1640s, local supplies of timber for charcoal were all but exhausted, and the ironworks was closed.

Rievaulx 1857

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