St Mary's Abbey, York

St. Mary's Abbey
Ruins of St Mary's Abbey Church
Monastery information
Order Benedictine
Established 1088
Disestablished 1539
Dedicated to St. Mary
Diocese York
People
Founder(s) Stephen of Whitby, Alan Rufus, William II of England, William the Conqueror
Site
Location York, Yorkshire, England
Coordinates 53°57′41″N 1°05′17″W / 53.96139°N 1.08806°W / 53.96139; -1.08806Coordinates: 53°57′41″N 1°05′17″W / 53.96139°N 1.08806°W / 53.96139; -1.08806
Visible remains Hospitium, precinct walls, gatehouse, abbey church (ruins with part of the nave and crossing still standing), abbot's house (substantially altered); statues and other remains in the Yorkshire Museum.
Public access yes (Museum Gardens)

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 York 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 feet (110 m) 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 Abbot's House

The abbot's house, built of brick in 1483, survives 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 £1,230,000 in 2016),[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]

The Anonimalle Chronicle

The Anonimalle Chronicle is an important chronicle whose scope extends from the legendary Brutus to 1381.[11] It was composed in Anglo-Norman[12] by an anonymous monk of St Mary's Abbey towards the end of the 14th century. It includes the most detailed surviving description of a medieval parliament and a well-informed account of the Peasants' Revolt; these are likely to have been written by eyewitnesses and later incorporated into the chronicle.[11] The body of the chronicle from Brutus to the year 1307 has been described as a variant of the prose Brut but there are considerable differences (e.g. the chronicler shows an interest in early ecclesiastical history which the Brut does not). From 1307 to 1333 it follows the main Brut tradition more closely though it demonstrates a marked London interest. After 1333 the chronicle is an individual account probably drawing on sources originating in London.[11] The manuscript was known to the 16th-century antiquaries Thynne and Stow; its title derives from Thynne's description of it. It afterwards passed through the hands of various owners until it was found in the possession of the Ingilby family of Ripley Castle in 1920. The section from 1333 to 1381 was edited by V. H. Galbraith and published in 1927. In 1982 it was acquired by the Brotherton Collection, at the University of Leeds.[11] Another partial edition appeared in 1991 in the form of an edition and translation of the chronicle from 1307 to 1334 by Wendy Childs and John Taylor.[13]

Excavations in the Abbey precinct

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] These walls and part of the warming house are retained in the Museum as part of the Medieval gallery display.

Excavations of the chapter house were undertaken in 1912 by the honorary curator of Medieval archaeology, Walter Harvey-Brook [14] who, along with Edwin Ridsdale Tate designed and developed the Museum of Medieval Architecture on the site [15]

Further excavations in the abbey were undertaken in 1952–56 by the then Keeper of the Yorkshire Museum, George Willmot [16] who encountered the pre-Norman and Roman layers beneath the west wing of the nave.

Excavations in 2014 and 2015 discovered an apse in the south transept, large parts of the wall foundations, and numerous residual small finds dating from the Roman to Modern periods. These investigations also encountered fragments of human remains, disturbed from burials somewhere on the site. One of the major conclusions of these excavations was the prevalence of in situ archaeological remains at a very shallow depth beneath the modern ground surface; in some cases as little as 7 cm underground.[17][18]


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]

AbbotDates of AbbacyNotes
Stephen of Whitby1088–1112
Richard1112–1131
Gaufried1131–1133Seceded
Severinus (or Savaricus)
Clement1161–1184
Robert de Harpham1184–1189
Robery de Longo Campo1189–1194Deposed
William de Roundel? – 1239
Thomas de Warthill
Simon de Warwick1258–1296Major rebuilding programme
Benedict de Malton1296–1303
John de Gilling1303–1313
Alan de Wasse1313–1331
Thomas de Malton1331–1359
William de Mary's1359–1382
William de Bradford1382–1389
Thomas de Staynesgrave1389–1398
Thomas de Pygott1398–1405
Thomas de Spoffoth
William Dalton? – 1423
William Welly (or Wells)? – 1436Resigned
Roger Kyrkby (or Kiby)
John cottingham
Thomas Bothe? – 1485
William SevyrLater Bishop of Durham 1502–1505
Robert Wanhope? – 1507
Edmund Thornton
Edmund Whalley
William Thorntonc.1530 – 1540Abbot during the Dissolution of the Monasteries

Burials

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 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."[19]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Historic England. "St. Mary's Abbey, York (56602)". PastScape. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Dean, G. 2008. Medieval York. Stroud: History Press. p. 86
  3. 1 2 3 4 Norton, C. "The St Mary's Abbey Precincts". University of York, Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
  4. ↑ Sharpe, R. "1088 – WILLIAM II AND THE REBELS" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 June 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  5. 1 2 Page, William, ed. (1974). "Friaries: Friaries in York". A History of the County of York: Volume 3. British History Online. London: Victoria County History. pp. 283–296. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Tillott, P. M., ed. (1961). "The sites and remains of the religious houses". A History of the County of York: the City of York. British History Online. London: Victoria County History. pp. 357–365. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  7. ↑ Coppack, G. 1993. Fountains Abbey. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd / English Heritage. p. 17
  8. ↑ Mackie, J. (1951). The English Army at Flodden. Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, VIII. Edinburgh. pp. 57, 74, 81.
  9. ↑ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
  10. 1 2 3 Ridsdale Tate, E. 1929. The Charm of St. Mary's Abbey and the Architectural Museum, York. York: Yorkshire Philosophical Society. pp. 6–12
  11. 1 2 3 4 The Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds, its contents described with illustrations of fifty books and manuscripts. Leeds: University Library, 1986 ISBN 0-902454-07-2; pp. 4–5
  12. ↑ Childs, Wendy R.; Taylor, John, ed. and trans., The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307 to 1334, from Brotherton Collection MS 29 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 147, 1991) ISBN 978-0902122598; Online Medieval Sources Bibliography
  13. ↑ Childs, Wendy R.; Taylor, John, ed. and trans., The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307 to 1334, from Brotherton Collection MS 29 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 147, 1991). ISBN 9780902122598
  14. ↑ 1913. Annual Report of the Council of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for 1912. York: Yorkshire Philosophical Society
  15. ↑ Brook, W. H. 1921.‘Catalogue of the Museum of Medieval Architecture’, Vol. 1. preface [Unpublished catalogue held in the Yorkshire Museum]
  16. ↑ Willmot, G. F. 1953. "Interim Report on the 1952 Excavation in St. Mary's Abbey", Yorkshire Philosophical Society, Annual Report for the year 1952. York: YPS. pp. 22–3
  17. ↑ Parker, Adam (2016). "Excavations in the South Transept of St. Mary's Abbey". FORUM: The Journal of the Council for British Archaeology, Yorkshire. 4: 71–76.
  18. ↑ Parker, Adam. "Shallow Surprises: Excavations in York's St. Mary's Abbey". Medieval Archaeology. 60 (2): 377–382.
  19. ↑ Ridsdale Tate, E. 1929. The Charm of St. Mary's Abbey and the Architectural Museum, York. York: Yorkshire Philosophical Society, p. 16
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