Tintern Abbey (Welsh: Abaty Tyndyrn pronunciationⓘ) is a ruined medieval abbey adjacent to the village of Tintern in Monmouthshire, on the Welsh bank of the River Wye, which at this location forms the border between Monmouthshire in Wales and Gloucestershire in England. Founded on 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, it was the first Cistercian foundation in Wales, and the second in Britain (after Waverley Abbey).
The abbey fell into ruin after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. Its remains have been celebrated in poetry and painting from the 18th century onwards. In 1984, Cadw took over responsibility for managing the site. Tintern Abbey is visited by approximately 70,000 people every year.
History
Earliest history
The Monmouthshire writer Fred Hando records the tradition of Tewdrig, King of Glywysing who retired to a hermitage above the river at Tintern. He then emerged to lead his son's army to victory against the Saxons at Pont-y-Saeson, a battle in which he was killed.
Cistercian foundations
The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 at the abbey of Cîteaux. A breakaway faction of the Benedictines, the Cistercians sought to re-establish observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict. Considered the strictest of the monastic orders, they laid down requirements for the construction of their abbeys, stipulating that "none of our houses is to be built in cities, in castles or villages; but in places remote from the conversation of men. Let there be no towers of stone for bells, nor of wood of an immoderate height, which are unsuited to the simplicity of the order". The Cistercians also developed an approach to the Benedictine requirement for a dual commitment to pray and work that saw the evolving of a dual community, the monks and the lay brothers, illiterate workers who contributed to the life of the abbey and to the worship of God through manual labour. The order proved exceptionally successful and by 1151, five hundred Cistercian houses had been founded in Europe. The Carta Caritatis (Charter of Love) laid out their basic principles, of obedience, poverty, chastity, silence, prayer, and work. With this austere way of life, the Cistercians were one of the most successful orders in the 12th and 13th centuries. The lands of the Abbey were divided into agricultural units or granges, on which local people worked and provided services such as smithies to the Abbey.
William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester introduced the first colony of Cistercian monks to England at Waverley, Surrey, in 1128. His first cousin, Walter de Clare, of the powerful family of Clare, established the second Cistercian house in Britain, and the first in Wales, at Tintern in 1131. The Tintern monks came from a daughter house of Cîteaux, L'Aumône Abbey, in the diocese of Chartres in France. In time, Tintern established two daughter houses, Kingswood in Gloucestershire (1139) and Tintern Parva, west of Wexford in southeast Ireland (1203).
First and second abbeys: 1131–1536
The present-day remains of Tintern are a mixture of building works covering a 400-year period between 1131 and 1536. Very little of the first buildings still survives today; a few sections of walling are incorporated into later buildings and the two recessed cupboards for books on the east of the cloisters are from this period. The church of that time was smaller than the present building, and slightly to the north.
The Abbey was mostly rebuilt during the 13th century, starting with the cloisters and domestic ranges, and finally the great church between 1269 and 1301. The first mass in the rebuilt presbytery was recorded to have taken place in 1288, and the building was consecrated in 1301, although building work continued for several decades. Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk, the then lord of Chepstow, was a generous benefactor; his monumental undertaking was the rebuilding of the church. The earl's coat of arms was included in the glasswork of the Abbey's east window in recognition of his contribution.
It is this great Decorated Gothic abbey church that can be seen today, representing the architectural developments of its period; it has a cruciform plan with an aisled nave, two chapels in each transept, and a square-ended aisled chancel. The abbey is built of Old Red Sandstone, with colours varying from purple to buff and grey. Its total length from east to west is 228 feet, while the transept is 150 feet in length.
King Edward II stayed at Tintern for two nights in 1326. When the Black Death swept the country in 1349, it became impossible to attract new recruits for the lay brotherhood; during this period, the granges were more likely to be tenanted out than worked by lay brothers, evidence of Tintern's labour shortage. In the early 15th century, Tintern was short of money, due in part to the effects of the Welsh uprising under Owain Glyndŵr against the English kings, when abbey properties were destroyed by the Welsh. The closest battle to Tintern Abbey was at Craig-y-dorth near Monmouth, between Trellech and Mitchel Troy.
Dissolution and ruin
In the reign of Henry VIII, the Dissolution of the Monasteries ended monastic life in England, Wales and Ireland. On 3 September 1536, Abbot Wych surrendered Tintern Abbey and all its estates to the King's visitors and ended a way of life that had lasted 400 years. Valuables from the Abbey were sent to the royal Treasury and Abbot Wych was pensioned off. The building was granted to the then lord of Chepstow, Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester. Lead from the roof was sold and the decay of the buildings began.
Architecture and description
Church
The west front of the church, with its seven-light decorated window, was completed around 1300. The reconstruction of the church began in 1269 and was mostly completed by 1301.
Nave
The nave is of six bays, and originally had arcades to both the northern and southern sides.
Monks' choir and presbytery
The presbytery is of four bays, with a great east window, originally of eight lights. Almost all of the tracery is gone, with the exception of the central column and the mullion above.
Cloister
The cloister retains its original width, but its length was extended in the 13th century rebuilding, creating a near square.
Book room and sacristy
The book room parallels the sacristy and both were created at the very end of the construction period of the second abbey, around 1300.
Chapter house
The chapter house was the place for daily gatherings of the monks, to discuss non-religious abbey business, make confession and listen to a reading from the Book of Rules.
Monks' dormitory and latrine
The monks' dormitory occupied almost the entirety of the upper storey of the east range. The latrines were double-storeyed, with access both from the dormitory and from the day-room below.
Refectory
The refectory dates from the early 13th century, and is a replacement for an earlier hall.
Kitchen
Little of the kitchen, which served both the monks' refectory and the lay brothers' dining hall, remains.
Lay brothers' dormitory
The dormitory was above the lay brothers' refectory but has been completely destroyed.
Infirmary
The infirmary, 107 ft long and 54 ft wide, housed both sick and elderly monks in cubicles in the aisles. The cubicles were originally open to the hall but were enclosed in the 15th century when each recess was provided with a fireplace.
Abbot's residence
The abbot's lodgings date from two periods, its origins in the early 13th century, and with a major expansion in the late 14th century.
Industry
Following the Abbey's dissolution, the adjacent area became industrialised with the setting-up of the first wireworks by the Company of Mineral and Battery Works in 1568 and the later expansion of factories and furnaces up the Angidy valley. Charcoal was made in the woods to feed these operations and, in addition, the hillside above was quarried for the making of lime at a kiln in constant operation for some two centuries. The Abbey site was in consequence subject to a degree of pollution and the ruins themselves were inhabited by the local workers. J.T.Barber, for example, remarked on "passing the works of an iron foundry and a train of miserable cottages engrafted on the offices of the Abbey" on his approach.
Not all visitors to the Abbey ruins were shocked by the intrusion of industry, however. Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey set out to view the ironworks at midnight on their 1795 tour, while others painted or sketched them during the following years. A 1799 print of the Abbey by Edward Dayes includes the boat landing near the ruins with the square-sailed local cargo vessel known as a trow drawn up there. On the bank is some of the encroaching housing, while in the background above are the cliffs of a lime quarry and smoke rising from the kiln. Though Philip James de Loutherbourg's 1805 painting of the ruins does not include the intrusive buildings commented on by others, it makes their inhabitants and animals a prominent feature. Even William Havell's panorama of the valley from the south pictures smoke rising in the distance (see Gallery), much as Wordsworth had noted five years before "wreathes of smoke sent up in silence from among the trees" in his description of the scene.
Tourism
18th and 19th centuries
By the mid-18th century it became fashionable to visit "wilder" parts of the country. The Wye Valley in particular was well known for its romantic and picturesque qualities and the ivy-clad Abbey was frequented by tourists. One of the earliest prints of the Abbey had been in the series of engravings of historical sites made in 1732 by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck. Their sets of views, however, catered to antiquarian interests and often were a means to flatter the landowners involved and so gain orders for their publications. Tourism as such developed in the following decades. The "Wye Tour" is claimed to have had its beginning after Dr John Egerton began taking friends on trips down the valley in a specially constructed boat from his rectory at Ross-on-Wye and continued doing so for a number of years. Rev. Dr. Sneyd Davies' short verse epistle, "Describing a Voyage to Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire, from Whitminster in Gloucestershire", was published in 1745, the year Egerton took possession of his benefice. But that journey was made in the opposite direction, sailing from the Gloucestershire shore across the River Severn to Chepstow and then ascending the Wye.
Among subsequent visitors was Francis Grose, who included the Abbey in his Antiquities of England and Wales, begun in 1772 and supplemented with more illustrations from 1783. In his description he noted how the ruins were being tidied for the benefit of tourists: "The fragments of its once sculptured roof, and other remains of its fallen decorations, are piled up with more regularity than taste on each side of the grand aisle." There they remained for the next century and more, as is evident from the watercolours of J. M. W. Turner (1794), the prints of Francis Calvert (1815) and the photographs of Roger Fenton (1858). Grose further complained that the site was too well tended and lacked "that gloomy solemnity so essential to religious ruins".
Another visitor during the 1770s was the Rev. William Gilpin, who later published a record of his tour in Observations on the River Wye (1782), devoting several pages to the Abbey as well as including his own sketches of both a near and a far view of the ruins. Though he too noted the same points as had Grose, and despite also the presence of the impoverished residents and their desolate dwellings, he found the Abbey nevertheless "a very inchanting piece of ruin". Gilpin's book helped increase the popularity of the already established Wye tour and gave travellers the aesthetic tools by which to interpret their experience. It also encouraged "its associated activities of amateur sketching and painting" and the writing of other travel journals of such tours. Initially Gilpin's book was associated with his theory of the Picturesque, but later some of this was modified by another editor so that, as Thomas Dudley Fosbroke’s Gilpin on the Wye (1818), the account of the tour could function as the standard guidebook for much of the new century.