A Visit to Rievaulx Abbey - North Yorkshire
I'm writing this blog post as the UK, once again, enters a period of uncertainty with the oncoming implications of leaving the European Union coupled with the worry and concern regarding a new strain of the Covid19 virus. With all of this in mind I thought I would drift back to August 2019. To a more peaceful time when it was easier to travel around and visit different places.
A couple of years ago I watched a YouTube video about Rievaulx Abbey. I was really impressed with the place and decided that, as an amateur photographer, this was somewhere I had to visit. So in August 2019 I took a three day break North Yorkshire staying in Thirsk. Rievaulx Abbey is only 12 miles from Thirsk so it was definitely going to be on the list of places to go. I checked on the internet to find out what time it was open and being close to Thirsk I knew that I’d be able to arrive early and spend some considerable time there. The maps below show the location of the Abbey.
The abbey is close to the town of Helmsley off the B1257. I used the postcode of YO62 5LB in the SatNav which took me alongside the River Wye on a road called Rievaulx Bank. As you travel along this road the Abbey appears on the right hand side. I stopped the car to take a photograph from this vantage point and realised that it was much bigger that I had anticipated.
I arrived in the car park and grabbed my camera bag and tripod and headed into the entrance. The Abbey is operated by English Heritage so I had to make sure that it was OK for me to take photographs. I was informed that I could take photographs provided they were for my personal use and not for any type of business. The staff on the pay desk were very cooperative and suggested a few vantage points for me to use.
Having paid I passed through the doorway onto the main campus. It’s at this point that I realised the YouTube video really hadn’t done justice to the place. It was enormous and spread in every direction. It was total photographic overload. I decided that I would need to do a ‘reccy’ and try to put together a makeshift shot list. My ‘reccy’ took the better part of an hour which gives you some idea os the sheer size of the site.
Now that I’d got my shot list I could set about taking photographs. The abbey’s history is far too complex to cover in this blog post but this extract from the English Heritage website give a VERY brief outline. English Heritage Website
“Rievaulx Abbey, founded in 1132, was the first Cistercian abbey to be established in the north of England. It quickly became one of the most powerful and spiritually renowned centres of monasticism in Britain, housing a 650-strong community at its peak in the 1160s under its most famous abbot, Aelred. The monastery was suppressed in 1538, but the spectacular abbey ruins became a popular subject for Romantic artists in the 18th and 19th centuries.”
As I began my photographic journey around the site I couldn’t help but admire the skills and techniques involved in building it. Where did the stone come from?, How was it transported, how was it carved? And how was it lifted into place all those years ago? The ancient builders were incredible.
I wanted to start with the main building and some of the structures within and then move on to the outlying buildings and structures. It's not easy tyrying to identify the different parts of this vast structure and I won't attempt to here but there is an illustrated plan on the website that helps. Below is a selection of the various images I took during my visit.
