 Ruins of St Mary's Abbey Church | |
 Interactive map of St Mary's Abbey | |
| Monastery information | |
|---|---|
| Order | Benedictine |
| Established | 1088; 938 years ago (1088) |
| Disestablished | 1539; 487 years ago (1539) |
| Dedicated to | St Mary |
| Diocese | York |
| People | |
| Founders | Stephen of Whitby,Alan Rufus,William II of England,William the Conqueror |
| Architecture | |
| Heritage designation | Scheduled monument |
| Designated date | 19 April 1915[1] |
| Style | Gothic |
| Site | |
| Location | York,Yorkshire,England |
| Coordinates | 53°57′41″N1°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 theYorkshire Museum. |
| Public access | yes (Museum Gardens) |
TheAbbey of St Mary is aruinedBenedictineabbey inYork,England and ascheduled monument.[1]
Once one of the most prosperous abbeys inNorthern England,[2] its remains lie in what are now theYork Museum Gardens, on a steeply-sloping site to the west ofYork Minster.
The original church on the site was founded in 1055 and dedicated to SaintOlaf. After theNorman Conquest the church came into the possession of the Anglo-Breton magnateAlan Rufus who granted the lands to Abbot Stephen and a group of monks fromWhitby. The abbey church was refounded in 1088[3][4] when KingWilliam II of England visited York in January or February of that year[5] and gave the monks additional lands. The following year he laid the foundation stone of the newNorman church and the site was rededicated to theVirgin Mary.[6][7] The foundation ceremony was attended by bishopOdo of Bayeux and ArchbishopThomas of Bayeux.[2] The monks moved to York from a site atLastingham in Ryedale in the 1080s and are recorded there in theDomesday Book of 1086.[2] Following a dispute and riot in 1132, a party of reform-minded monks left to establish theCistercian monastery ofFountains Abbey.[8] In 1137 the abbey was badly damaged by a great fire.[6] The surviving ruins date from a rebuilding programme begun in 1271 and finished by 1294.
The abbey occupied an extensive precinct site immediately outside the city walls, betweenBootham and theRiver Ouse.[3][7] 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;[7] the walls were nearly three-quarters of a mile long. In 1318 the abbot received royal permission to raise the height of the wall andcrenellate it; a stretch of this wall still runs alongBootham andMarygate 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]
St Mary's Tower is a structure at the corner of Marygate and Bootham.[9]
The abbey church is aligned northeast–southwest, due to restrictions of the site.[2] The original Norman church had anapsidal 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,[7] and was swiftly completed during a single twenty-four year building campaign,[4] 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 transepts with chapels in an eastern aisle, and a presbytery with aisles.[7] To the east of the cloister and on the line of the transepts were a vestibule leading to thechapter house, thescriptorium and library.[7] Beyond the church lay the kitchen, novices' building and infirmary.[7] The Abbey chronicle (which has not been fully translated fromLatin) names the project officers as Simon de Warwick, a monk administrator and the masterstonemason Master Simon,[4] all of whom were still alive upon the completion of the project in 1294.[4]
The abbot's house, built of brick in 1483, survives as theKing's Manor because it became the seat of theCouncil of the North in 1539; the abbots of St Mary's and the abbey featured in the medieval and early modern ballads ofRobin Hood, with the abbot usually as Robin Hood's nemesis.[citation needed]
In August 1513 the Abbot supplied four chests for the use of Philip Tilney, treasurer of the English army before theBattle of Flodden. The Abbey seems to have become the accounting office for the army in the north, involvingThomas Magnus,Archdeacon of the East Riding, and two monks of the abbey, Richard Wode and Richard Rypon.[10]
St Mary's, the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north ofEngland and one of the largest landholders in Yorkshire, was worth over £2,000 a year, (equivalent to £1,700,000 in 2023),[11] when it was valued in 1539, during thedissolution of the monasteries underHenry VIII; it was closed and subsequently substantially destroyed. On 26 November 1539 the Abbey surrendered £2,085 and 50 monks tothe Crown.[12]
A fifteenth-century index catalogue records that the Abbey's library originally contained over 750 books. Approximately thirty-five texts from the Abbey are currently extant, including only five printed books; these include a 15th-century copy ofRichard Rolle'sIncendium Amoris.[13]
AVulgate Bible, sold at auction in England in 2010, has been identified as the possession of Brother John Grayson from St Mary's Abbey. It is an octavo volume and was printed on 8 November 1526 by Thielmann Kerver in Paris. Brother Grayson was first noted at the Abbey in 1528 but was absent from its pension list at the time of the Dissolution in 1539.[13]
The Anonimalle Chronicle is an important chronicle whose scope extends from thelegendary Brutus to 1381.[14] It was composed inAnglo-Norman[15] 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 thePeasants' Revolt of 1381; these are likely to have been written by eyewitnesses and later incorporated into the chronicle.[14] The body of the chronicle from Brutus to the year 1307 has been described as a variant of theBrut Chronicle, but there are considerable differences (e.g. the chronicler shows an interest in early ecclesiastical history which theBrut does not). From 1307 to 1333 it follows the mainBrut 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.[14] The manuscript was known to the 16th-century antiquariesFrancis Thynne andJohn 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 theIngilby family ofRipley Castle in 1920. The section from 1333 to 1381 was edited byV. H. Galbraith and published in 1927. In 1982 it was acquired by the Brotherton Collection, at theUniversity of Leeds.[14] 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.[16]
TheYorkshire 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 carvedchapter house vestibule (c. 1298–1307) survives incorporated into Tempest Anderson Hall lecture theatre (1911–12).[3][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[17] who, along withE. Ridsdale Tate designed and developed the Museum of Medieval Architecture on the site.[18]
Further excavations in the abbey were undertaken in 1952–56 by the then Keeper of theYorkshire Museum,George Willmot who encountered the pre-Norman and Roman layers beneath the west wing of thenave.[19]
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.[20][21]
A 13th-century gilt,Limoges enamel figurine depictingChrist (theSt Mary's Abbey Figurine) was discovered in the Abbey in 1826, having avoided the dissolution of the monastery in 1539. It disappeared soon afterwards, and was thought by some to have been destroyed, only to be discovered in a private art collection in Germany in the 1920s. In 2019, the statue was bought by York Museums Trust and put on display inYorkshire Museum.[22]
The abbots of St. Mary's were entitled to wear a mitre and were habitually summoned to Parliament.[12] In total there are known to have been some 30 Abbots, including:[12][23]
| Abbot | Dates of Abbacy | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen of Whitby | 1088–1112 | |
| Richard | 1112–1131 | |
| Gaufried | 1131–1133 | Seceded |
| Severinus (or Savaricus) | – 1161 | Died in office |
| Clement | 1161–1184 | Died in office |
| Robert de Harpham | 1184–1195 | Deposed |
| Robert de Longo Campo | 1197–1239 | Died in office |
| William de Roundel | 1241–1244 | Died in office |
| Thomas de Warthill (Wardhull) | 1244–1258 | Died in office |
| Simon de Warwick | 1258–1296 | Died in office |
| Benedict de Malton | 1296–1303 | Resigned |
| John de Gilling | 1303–1313 | Died in office |
| Alan de Wasse | 1313–1331 | Died in office |
| Thomas de Malton | 1331–1359 | Resigned |
| William de Mary's | ?1359–1382 | Died in office |
| William de Bradford (Bridford or Brydford) | 1382–1389 | Died in office |
| Thomas de Staynesgrave | 1389–1398 | Died in office |
| Thomas de Pygott (Pygdt) | 1398–1405 | Died in office |
| Thomas de Spoffoth | 8 June 1405–?1421 | Resigned |
| William Dalton | 1422–1423 | Died in office |
| William Wells | 1423–1436 | Resigned |
| Roger Kyrkby (or Kiby) | 1437–1438 | Died in office |
| John Cottingham | 1438–1464 | Died in office |
| Thomas Bothe (Booth) | 1464–1485 | Resigned |
| William Senhouse (Sever) | 1485–1502 | Later Bishop of Durham 1502–1505 |
| Robert Wanhope | 1502–?1507 | |
| Edmund Thornton | 1507–?1521 | |
| Edmund Whalley | 1521–1530 | |
| William Thornton | 1530–1539 | Abbot during thedissolution of the monasteries |
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 theKing'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 forSt. Olave's Church, between 1717 and 1720 forBeverley Minster, and in 1736 for the landing stage of Lendal Ferry.[7]
The remains of the Abbey were described byE. 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."[25]
Media related toSt Mary's Abbey at Wikimedia Commons
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