As we descended into the valley, the distant ruins on the far side nestled into the enfolding arms of Yorkshire ’s land. It was not a grand or awe inspiring sight, but it possessed a different kind of power. We knew it when we saw it, by the crumbling Norman arches of the north wall, that this is what we had come for. As I stepped off the coach, I too felt as though the land embraced me, in this once holy place.
In many ways, the ruins seemed peculiar as we stood beneath the west wall. The lower lip of the rose window ascended on the north side, to meet with a surviving small tower. It created the shape of a crescent moon, oddly like to a minaret, or to a design which otherwise belongs to a different tradition. The narrow, stumpy windows in the chunky stonework made the west wall into a dark impediment, stealing the brilliant sun’s light, hurling a shadow which permitted only minor intrusions of light to touch the ground. Even after so many centuries of decay, the abbey still imposed, seeming to dictate to the natural world around it, and to the people who huddled in its shadow.
Nicola, our guide (host, tutor, what you will), told us that the abbey was the first of its kind in the Early English gothic style. Adam and I were slightly puzzled at this, for our own eyes had first registered the Romanesque of the heavy, lightless window designs, as frequently rounded as pointed. But for one stunning yet only half present space for a rose window, my imagination failed to conjure a will let, airy gothic place, but somewhere dark and brooding. Adam and I thought the abbey represented a first substantial effort of the Early English style, rather than a first achievement or realisation.
But well. Nicola quite anticipated how we all felt about the place. A still and silent ruin beneath the undulating waves of the sunny English countryside was spiritual tonic to my soul’s gin, if I may allow my feelings to attest for all. We soon learned from Nicola that a large stone complex on carefully manipulated land would not have been a refuge from the modern world but rather, when medieval was modern, was the very modern world itself. It traded, it communicated, it had livestock, it had light industry, it produced, it consumed, men lived and men worked, men came and left, their numbers expanded and diminished. They went from greatness to ruin. Upon these tales, I reconceived the abbey. It was no longer a peaceful place for a perturbed, unquiet modern soul, but a graveyard, a chapter in history, a monument to something guessed at which was once vital, now dead.
We went on a treasureless treasure hunt. Our mission: to seek out and record things outstanding, perplexing and unexpected. One particular aspect Nicola foretold us was the surviving floor mosaics. They were an indication not only of wealth but, crucially, wealth which the abstemious monks ostentatiously spent. Indeed, what we found was very precious, as I shall describe in one example which we found at the foot of a saint’s shrine. It is arranged into four circles, designed in stages as a narrower outer encircling a respective broad inner. The innermost is in the pattern of a flower, perhaps signifying the sun’s light emanating from a centre, reaching out to the second narrow circle of small diamonds, further encircled by a circle of circles, each according to a six-petal design, as like to wheels wheeling about a bigger wheel. The outermost circle is packed with sharp diamond figures, giving a prickly edge and limit to the circles’ aura. As the sun still hovered high due east, the north wall gleamed. There survived in a row, nine Romanesque windows, not very wide and only moderately tall. Between each, there flared out the exposed crumbled stonework which once would have vaulted upward to a canopy, parallel to the nave. I contemplated how high they might have gone, and my mind’s eye replaced the absent Romanesque rounded arches which might have made the galleries, running atop, looking down upon this solemn place. I wondered at the chants and the prayers which, long ago, would have resounded down these vaulted walls.
When we moved out of the south transept, we came to a less holy place. On such a site, it would be appropriate, and easy to joke, that the open sewers were profane. My compatriots leapt straight in, and only Adam seemed to stand tall in the mire I conjectured for them. Mild amusement aside, we began to fancy ourselves as architectural detectives, pondering as we went: how do the vaults in the eating place ascend? Above which rooms would there have been another floor? Are there stairs nearby? Would this vast space over here have had one purpose, or several? If the second, were the monks keeping an eye on each other? Is this a private chapel? – quite unmeek. Is this the closet, or the water closet?
Thereupon, the good shepherd Sherman recalled his flock to the bus. As I left, I thought of all the absent people I would love, one day, to bring to this place.
© Ian O’Neal, 2011. Thanks to Miranda Fay Thomas and Adam Bramhall for the images. This post was written for the University of York HRC website blog, following an outing to historic sites around the village of Coxwold. http://www.hrctreehouse.co.uk/
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