Byland Abbey
 Abbeys |
Byland Abbey was originally founded in the early 12 th century by a small colony of Savigniac monks, as a daughter house to the powerful Furness Abbey in Cumbria. However, by 1177 the abbey records indicate that it was now a part of the Cistercian Order, having overcome a number of early problems.
Despite its ruinous state, enough of the east wall of the church has survived to show that the completed abbey of the mid 13 th century was an enormous edifice, in fact, the largest Cistercian monastery in England. As such, Byland was considered to be one of the three great abbeys of the North Country, along with Fountains and Rievaulx. Its masonry of mellow sandstone is of the highest quality, and when dappled in early morning sunlight the soft hues of the ageing stonework throws up in relief the superb detail of the medieval mason's work.
Once established, Byland Abbey prospered alongside its sister Yorkshire monasteries, the religious community within leading a well-ordered life of work and prayer with little of any consequence to disturb the serenity of their everyday existence. The exception being in the 15 th century when a marauding band of Scottish raiders attacked and pillaged the vulnerable church. Calm prevailed once more until the mid 16 th century when darkness fell upon monastic life. At the Dissolution of 1538 the abbot, together with his choir monks, was still in residence and they left the abandoned abbey with pensions. The monastery itself, as with most others, was stripped of its valuable assets, much of its beautiful stonework taken to adorn other buildings and the huge complex was consigned to centuries of neglect, vandalism and slow decay.
Almost four centuries passed before the abbey's decline was arrested and its ruins retrieved from nature's grip. In the 1920's the site was cleared and excavated, which revealed substantial sections of the abbey walls still standing. Within these walls a very sizeable cloister was unearthed, on one side of which was the ‘warming room', a very small room with a very large fireplace. Here the monks were permitted a fire in the harsh days of winter to take the chill from their bones. The delightful rose window at the west end, the fine detail on the stairs leading from the enormous cloister, the intricately patterned tiles of the south transept chapels, the glazed floor tiles and decorative capitals and corbels now in Byland Museum as well as the many fragments of elaborately carved and exquisitely decorated artefacts, suggest a building of breathtaking beauty that may have surpassed all others.