Looking at an Abbey

The Looking at... series uses real sites to investigate the clues left behind in the buildings and monuments of the past. The partly ruined Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, has a lot to tell the visitor about monastic life. There were many different orders of Cistercian monks, but they all followed the same rule laid down by St Benedict. Moreover, the layout of monasteries followed a common plan. The communities lived round a central cloister, a kind of village green, with a covered way all round. The spiritual center of their lives was worship, and so the most important building was the cross-shaped church to the north of the cloister.

The Cistercians were a self-sufficient order: at Rievaulx they had up to five hundred lay brethren, who farmed the lands but were not permitted to worship with the monks - they had to stay behind a screen which divided the church in two. It is possible to see where the dormitories, kitchens, refectory and infirmary were, and also how the Chapter House was reduced in size and rebuilt as the numbers of monks at Rievaulx dwindled over the centuries. The community was advanced for its time: in particular, it made provision for an unusually effective sewerage system.

Part of the series Looking at...