Set in a beautiful tree-sided valley in England's North York moors, the ruins of 800-year-old Rievaulx Abbey evoke a medieval world of Cistercian monks living and working, worshipping and seeking spiritual growth. This wide-ranging book provides an unprecedented account of Rievaulx -- its 400 years as a monastery and its next 400 years, forsaken and deteriorating. Peter Fergusson and Stuart Harrison present the first comprehensive archaeological and architectural analysis of Rievaulx and the other buildings within its 92-acre walled precinct. They include extensive reconstruction drawings that bring to life the abbey and its infirmary, service buildings, water meadows, mills, and workshops.
The authors describe Rievaulx's remarkable architectural development from its early decades as home to a community of 650 men to its desertion after Henry VIII's Suppression. Fergusson and Harrison consider the buildings' context, architectural significance, iconography, and social and economic influences. Then, tracing the suppression of the monastery and changing perceptions of the ruin from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries, the authors complete their portrait of the spectacular abbey and its meanings across time.
