St Mary's Abbey, York

The Abbey of St Mary is a ruined Benedictine abbey in York, England and a Grade I listed building.^[1]

History

Once the richest abbey in the north of England,^[2] it lies in what are now the Yorkshire Museum Gardens, on a steeply-sloping site to the west of York Minster.

The original church on the site was founded in 1055 and dedicated to Saint Olaf II of Norway. After the Norman Conquest the church came into the possession of the Anglo-Breton magnate Alan Rufus who granted the lands to Abbot Stephen and a group of monks from Whitby. The abbey church was refounded in 1088^[1][3] when the King, William Rufus, visited York in January or February of that year^[4] and gave the monks additional lands. The following year he laid the foundation stone of the new Norman church and the site was rededicated to the Virgin Mary.^[5][6] The foundation ceremony was attended by bishop Odo of Bayeux and Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux.^[2] The monks moved to York from a site at Lastingham in Ryedale in the 1080s and are recorded there in Domesday.^[2] Following a dispute and riot in 1132, a party of reform-minded monks left to establish the Cistercian monastery of Fountains Abbey.^[7] In 1137 the abbey was badly damaged by a great fire.^[5] The surviving ruins date from a rebuilding programme begun in 1271 and finished by 1294.

Ruins of the abbey church from the southern end

Precinct

The abbey occupied an extensive precinct site immediately outside the city walls, between Bootham and the River Ouse.^[1][6] The original boundary included a ditch and a narrow strip of ground, but the walled circuit was constructed above this in the 1260s in the Abbacy of Simon de Warwick;^[6] the walls were nearly three-quarters of a mile long. In 1318 the abbot received royal permission to raise the height of the wall and crenelate it; a stretch of this wall still runs along Bootham and Marygate to the River Ouse.^[2]

The gatehouse in Marygate and its lodge formed part of a range of buildings that linked to the older church of St Olave by a chapel dedicated to Mary. Though work on the chapel and gatehouse was under way 1314 and completed in 1320, the surviving structures are mostly of fifteenth-century origin.^[2]

Abbey Church

The abbey church is aligned northeast-southwest, due to restrictions of the site.^[2] The original Norman church had an apsidal liturgical east end, and its side aisles ended in apses, though they were square on the exterior. Rebuilding began in 1270, under the direction of Abbot Simon de Warwick,^[6] and was swiftly completed during a single twenty-four year building campaign,^[3] such was the financial strength of the abbey. The completed abbey church was 350 ft in length, consisted of a nave with aisles, north and south trancepts with chapels in an eastern aisle, and a presbytery with aisles.^[6] To the east of the cloister and on the line of the transepts were a vestibule leading to the chapter house, the scriptorium and library.^[6] Beyond the church lay the kitchen, novices' building and infirmary.^[6] The Abbey chronicle (which has not been fully translated from Latin) names the project officers as Simon de Warwick, a monk administrator and the master stonemason Master Simon,^[3] all of whom were still alive upon the completion of the project in 1294.^[3]

The Abbots House

The abbot's house, built of brick in 1483, survived as the "King's Manor" because it became the seat of the Council of the North in 1539; the abbots of St Mary's and the abbey featured in the medieval and early modern ballads of Robin Hood, with the abbot usually as Robin Hood's nemesis).

The abbot's house

In August 1513 the Abbot supplied four chests for the use of Philip Tilney treasurer of the English army before the battle of Flodden. The Abbey seems to have become the accounting office for the army in the north, involving Thomas Magnus Archdeacon of the East Riding and two monks of the abbey, Richard Wode and Richard Rypon.^[8]

The Dissolution

St Mary's, the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England and one of the largest landholders in Yorkshire, was worth over £2,000 a year, (equivalent to £1,210,000 in 2015),^[9] when it was valued in 1539, during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII; it was closed and subsequently substantially destroyed. On 26 November 1539 the Abbey surrendered £2,085 and 50 monks to the crown.^[10]

Abbots of St. Mary's

The abbots of St. Mary's were similar in prestige to the Archbishop of York, being entitled to wear a mitre and having a seat in Parliament (allowing them the style "My Lord Abbot").^[10] In total there were 30 Abbots, including:^[10]

Remains

Painting of the surviving ruins by Michael Angelo Rooker in 1778

Visible remains of St Mary's Abbey, York

All that remains today are the north and west walls, plus a few other remnants: the half-timbered Pilgrims' Hospitium, the West Gate and the 14th-century timber-framed Abbot's House (now called the King's Manor). The walls include interval towers along the north and west stretches, St Mary's Tower at the northwest corner and a polygonal water tower by the river. Much stone was removed from the site in the 18th century, in 1705 for St. Olave's Church, between 1717–1720 for Beverley Minster, and in 1736 for the landing stage of Lendal Ferry.^[6]

The Yorkshire Museum, built for the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, stands in part of the abbey cloister; parts of the east, south and west cloister walls were temporarily excavated in 1827–29 preparatory to digging the museum's foundations.^[2] The relationship between the Museum and abbey is historically quite intimate as part of the richly carved chapter house vestibule (c. 1298–1307) survives incorporated into Tempest Anderson Hall lecture theatre (1911–12).^[1][2] Additionally, excavations of the chapter house were undertaken in 1912 by the honorary curator of Medieval archaeology, Walter Harvey-Brook ^[11] who, along with Edwin Ridsdale Tate designed and developed the Museum of Medieval Architecture on the site ^[12] and retained aspects of the warming house and late twelfth-century chapter house for display. Further excavations in the abbey were undertaken in 1952–56 by the then Keeper of the Yorkshire Museum, George Willmot ^[13] who encountered the pre-Norman and Roman layers beneath the west wing of the nave.

The remains of the Abbey were described by Edwin Ridsdale Tate in a 1929 publication in which he asserted that: "Nowhere in England is there another spot so full of charm as York and where in York is there a more charming spot than the Gardens of the Philosophical Society, in which stand the beautiful fragments of that once powerful and noble monastery of St. Mary's. Here we must leave the venerable pile in the evening of its glory."^[14]

See also

• History of York
• Grade I listed churches in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the City of York
• List of monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII of England
• York City Walls
• York Museum Gardens

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to St Mary's Abbey.

• History of York: St Mary's Abbey
• The Yorkshire Museum and Gardens website

Benedictine abbeys and priories in medieval England and Wales
Independent houses	Abergavenny Abbotsbury Abingdon Alcester Athelney Bardney Bath Battle Bedford Birkenhead Bradwell Brewood (Black Ladies) Buckfast Burton Bury St Edmunds Canterbury (Christ Church) Canterbury (St Augustine's) Canwell Cerne Chertsey Chester Cholsey Colchester Coventry Crowland Durham Ely Evesham Eynsham Farewell Priory Faversham Glastonbury Gloucester Humberston Luffield Malmesbury Milton Monk Bretton Muchelney Molycourt Norwich (Holy Trinity) Pershore Peterborough Ramsey Reading Repton Rochester St Albans St Benet of Hulme Sandwell Selby Sherborne Shrewsbury Snelshall Tavistock Tewkesbury Thorney Upholland Walden Westminster Whitby Winchcombe Winchester (New Minister) Winchester (St Swithun) Worcester York (St Mary's)
Dependent houses	Aldeby Alkborough Alcester Alvecote Beadlow Bedemans Berg Belvoir Binham Breedon Brecon Bristol Bromfield Cardiff Cardigan Cranborne Darenth Deeping Dover Dunster Earls Colne Ewenny Ewyas Harold Exeter Farne Felixstowe Finchale Freiston Great Malvern Hatfield Peverel Henes (Sandtoft) Hereford Hertford Holy Island Horton Hoxne Hurley Jarrow Kidwelly Kilpeck King's Mead Kings Lynn Lammana Langley Leominster Leonard Stanley Lincoln Little Malvern Littlemore Lytham Middlesbrough Monkwearmouth Morville Norwich (St Leonard's) Oxford (of Canterbury) Oxford (of Durham) Oxford (of Gloucester) Penwortham Pilton Redbourne Richmond Rumburgh St Bees St Ives Scilly Snaith Snape Stamford Studley (Oxfordshire) Studley (Warwickshire) Sudbury Tickhill Tynemouth Wallingford Westbury-on-Trym Wetheral Wymondham Yarmouth
Alien priories	Allerton Mauleverer Andover Andwell Appuldurcombe Arundel Astley Aston Priors Atherington Avebury Axmouth Blyth Boxgrove Brimpsfield Burstall Burwell Caldy Carisbrooke Chepstow Clatford Cogges Corsham Covenham Cowick Creeting (St. Mary) Creeting (St. Olave) Debden Deerhurst Dunwich Ecclesfield Edith Weston Ellingham Everdon Eye Folkestone Frampton Goldcliff Grovebury Hamble Harmondsworth Hatfield Regis Haugham Hayling Headley Hinckley Holbeck Horsham St Faith Horsley Lancaster Lapley Lewisham Isleham Livers Ocle Llangennith Llangua Loders Minster Minster Lovell Minting Modbury Monks Kirby Monk Sherborne (Pamber) Monmouth Newent Ogbourne St George Otterton Panfield Pembroke Pill Ruislip Runcton St Cross St Dogmells St Michael's Mount St Neots Sele Spalding Sporle Standon Steventon Stogursey Stoke-by-Clare Stratfield Saye Swavesey Takeley Throwley Tickford Titley Toft Monks Totnes Tutbury Tywardreath Upavon Ware Wareham Warminghurst Warmington Wath Weedon Beck Weedon Lois West Mersea Wilsford Wing Winghale Wolston Wootton Wawen York (Holy Trinity)