Rievaulx Abbey at sunset North York Moors England
Rievaulx Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey, headed by the powerful Abbot of Rievaulx, located in the small village of Rievaulx (pronounced 'Ree-voh'), near Helmsley in North Yorkshire. When Riveaulx Abbey was founded in 1132 by twelve monks from Clairvaux Abbey as a mission centre for the colonisation of the north of England and Scotland, it was the first Cistercian abbey in the north. With time it became one of the great Cistercian abbeys of Yorkshire, second only to Fountains Abbey in fame. The remote location was ideal for the Cistercians, whose desire was to follow a strict life of prayer and self-sufficiency with as little contact as possible with the outside world. The Abbey lies in a wooded dale by the River Rye, sheltered by hills. To have enough flat land to build on, a small part of the river had to be diverted to a point several metres west of where it formerly flowed. (The monks altered the course of the river three times during the 12th century.) The trace of the old river is still visible in the Abbey's grounds. This is one illustration of the technical ingenuity of the monks, who over time built up a very profitable business mining lead and iron, rearing sheep and selling wool to buyers from all over Europe. Rievaulx Abbey eventually became one of the greatest and wealthiest in England, with 140 monks and many more lay brothers, receiving grants of land totalling 6000 acres (24 km²) and establishing daughter houses in England and Scotland. The Abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538. At that time there were said to be 72 buildings occupied by only an abbot and 21 monks, attended by 102 servants, with an income of £351 a year. It also had a prototype blast furnace at Laskill, producing cast iron as efficiently as a modern blast furnace; according to Gerry McDonnell (archeometallurgist of the University of Bradford), the closure of Rievaulx delayed the Industrial Revolution for two and a half centuries. Henry ordered the buildings to be rend
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Photo credit: © Mike Kipling Photography / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: abbey, atmosphere, christianity, church, cistercian, dusk, england, heritage, history, mikekipling, monks, night, rievaulx, ryedale, silhoette, sky, sunset, warm, yorkshire
