Rievaulx Abbey

So in case you didn't know, I'm mildly obsessed with monasteries. The ruined medieval kind, not the modern kind, although I'm sure they're cool too. Rievaulx is a particularly impressive ruin. The abbey was founded in the 12th century by a group of wanna be Cistercians from St Mary's Abbey in York (which was Benedictine). The Benedictines were once pretty much the end all and be all of monastic orders, but in the eleventh/twelfth  centuries, an number of new orders arose either as a reformist sect or to fulfill specific niches in pastoral care. For example, the Franciscans and Dominicans started up as mendicant (i.e. owned no property and relied on the charity of others) preaching orders who were based in towns and served the religious needs of townsfolk. The Cistercians on the other hand withdrew off into the countryside to live in more austere conditions; they felt that the Benedictines had gone soft and were living too comfortable of a lifestyle, which went against the original view of monasticism. The group at Rievaulx was eventually accepted into the official Cistercian order and built a great big monastery with new additions and expansions added on over the years.

Originally, the abbey would have been built with no elaboration/decoration and with very minimal concessions to comfort. But over the years, the Cistercian monasteries throughout England relaxed their policies and more decorative features were introduced, along with renovations to increase the comfort of the brothers; deprivations of warm clothing and fires in every room worked in warm Mediterranean climates, but up in Yorkshire? No thank you!

Here's one end of the abbey church, and you can see just how big the thing was.

The relaxation of the policies against decoration can be seen in some fancy carving within the church, although I don't expect you can see much of it in this photo.

And here's the church from one end looking down towards the altar area.

Big big church. Not rivaling the cathedrals or York Minster perhaps, but as far as monastic churches go? Big.

Here you can get a closer look at the carving I mentioned earlier:

And here is a reassembled section of the cloister walk. The cloister garth was a square/rectangular open courtyard that likely had some gardens. Surrounding the garth was the cloister walk and the major buildings of the monastery- dorms, refectory, chapter house, etc- would be on the four sides of this compound. A covered walkway would lead around the garth. Originally this would have been open stonework like in the photo, but most monasteries converted these with windows to keep out the chill winds. I'm not sure if Rievaulx did or not; if they did, it didn't survive the Dissolution of the monasteries, at which point all of the glass and some stone from the abbey were carted back to York for reuse.

Behold! A medieval cafeteria!(Or in Brit-speak, a refectory)

Pretty cool huh? Rievaulx is notable for just how much of the monastery is still standing. A large contributing factor to its survival was the fact that in the 17th? 18th? century, a rich guy landscaped the ruins as a folly for his manor house, thus largely preventing further destruction of the abbey. Plus, the fact that it is pretty remote helped too. Because the Cistercians were seeking to withdraw from the world, they sought out sites away from towns and people, and their monasteries tended to survive the destruction following the Dissolution better than their counterparts in more populated areas. There's a whole slew of other photos in my facebook album if you're interested.