‘The most beautiful eclesiastical ruin in Monmouthshire’
I was about ten years old when I first visited Tintern Abbey with my parents, and we drove there in my father’s first car. We wandered in amazement around the ruins and then my mother took me outside to buy an ice cream in a nearby shop.
My father, a keen photographer was still inside the abbey, busy with his camera and we stood beside the car waiting for him to return. He seemed to be taking a very long time and my mother became impatient and said, ‘Where on earth is he?’
Suddenly I spotted a lone figure near the top of one of the arches, standing precariously on a small stone platform with his camera on a tripod.
He was always looking for unusual angles for his pictures and a bird’s eye view looking down into the ruins was certainly very different.
When at last he came back to us, we learned that he had bribed one of the ground staff with a ten shilling note, to allow him to enter a normally locked door in the north transept and ascend a spiral staircase which led up to his desired viewpoint.
He was in fact copying the Reverend Francis Kilvert, who in the 1870s had done the very same thing in order to look down into the choir.
Francis was particularly interested in the wild flowers that he found growing there; ‘scarlet poppies, white roses, purple mallow and yellow stone crop.’
Preceded by Neath Abbey in 1129, Tintern was the second Cistercian abbey to be built in Britain and it was founded two years later by Walter fitz Richard de Clare, the Anglo-Norman Lord of Chepstow.
At that time Tintern was a deserted place, far from the dwellings of men, as all Cistercian monasteries were required to be. There was no road leading to it so the main access was by boat on the River Wye.
It was replaced in 1220 by a larger monastery constructed by the Bigod family, also Lords of Chepstow. The ruins that we see today mainly date from the 13th and early 14th centuries, including the soaring east end with its rose window. Dedicated to St Mary, the church has a total length from east to west of 228 feet and it remains the most complete part of the ruin.
In the abbey’s heyday there were 80 monks, but at the Dissolution in 1536, there were only thirteen and the abbot, Richard Wych, who was pensioned off at £23 a year. The buildings were granted to Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester, Lord of Chepstow and remained with his descendants as Dukes of Beaufort.
The ruins were allowed to decay until 1756 when the first attempts at restoration were made. Fortunately, the absence of any town or large village close to Tintern had meant that not a great deal of stone was robbed from the building with the result that its ruins have been preserved from complete despoilation in this way, like other once large and famous abbeys.
The first engraving of Tintern Abbey was made by the Buck brothers in 1732 and they recorded it very much as we see it today. JMW Turner visited the roofless, ivy covered ruins on several occasions between 1792 -98, when it was at the height of its romantic appeal.
And since then countless other artists have also made efforts to transfer to canvas the glory of these beautiful ruins.
William Wordsworth at the age of 23, first visited the Wye Valley, in 1793 and returned in the summer of 1798 when he wrote his famous ‘Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.’
He aptly described how it was ‘linking the landscape with the quiet of the sky’.
Archdeacon Coxe also came here, shortly afterwards, during his ‘Tour of Monmouthshire’ and was filled with delight ‘such as he had scarcely ever experienced’. The poet, Robert Bloomfield was equally ecstatic.
It is interesting that the comments of these early visitors vary considerably. Surprisingly, there was even disappointment, for some tourists in the so-called ‘Picturesque Period’ found the architecture too formal. William Gilpin in 1782 even suggested that there was scope for making the ruins more picturesque: ‘Though the ruins are beautiful, the whole is ill-shaped... a number of gable ends hurt the eye with their regularity; and disgust it by the vulgarity of their shape. A mallet judiciously used (but who durst use it?) might be of service in fracturing some of them...’
Thomas Roscoe admitted that ‘the lack of enthusiasm we feel on the outside seems to serve only as a greater enhancement of the glory within’. He would have been even more concerned with the exterior, if he had come in the present day and seen the car park full to capacity, with coach loads of tourists; the information centre, souvenir shops and other paraphernalia of the twenty first century with which this once quiet location is now saturated.
John Byng of Torrington was lost for words: ‘All descriptions must fall short of its awful grandeur.’ However, he certainly knew how to enjoy being there for he advised: ‘Bring wines, cold meat, with corn for the horses, spread your table in the ruins; and possibly a Welsh harper may be procured from Chepstow.’
However, Webb, writing some 30 years later thought differently: ‘People who were indecorous enough to take their meals on consecrated ground, gave the place the appearance of a market.’
William Makepeace in 1842 saw nothing wrong and was very impressed, for he declared, ‘I never saw such a magnificent elegance and simplicity in any Gothic building.’
During the 1880s, after the railway arrived in Tintern, midnight trips were popular in order to view the harvest moon rising through the great east window, 60ft high. It fits for a brief moment exactly into the rose orifice, and at one time the Abbey used to be thrown open to enable hundreds of visitors to witness this magical spectacle.
There was a very special day in 1887, when over a thousand people attended the first service held in the Abbey for 350 years. It was a thanksgiving for the 600th anniversary of the church and the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
In 1898, when the Duke of Beaufort decided to sell the property, visions were being conjured up of a wealthy American coming with a sackful of dollars to purchase the Abbey, which would be transplanted bodily to the United States. Such thoughts were much relieved by the news early in the winter of 1900 that Tintern Abbey and more than five thousand acres of the picturesque surroundings had been purchased by the Crown.
In 1914, ivy was removed by the Ministry of Works and the decaying walls repaired.
The revenue from sightseers was now devoted to the upkeep of the Abbey and to preserve its hallowed walls for the delight of future generations.
Today, the immaculate ruins are maintained and administered by Cadw, Welsh Historic Monuments and if you possess a membership card then entry is free of charge.
Tintern was never one of the really great monasteries, but its fame as a ruin has spread all over the world for it stands majestically in a beautiful location, surrounded by wooded hills and close to the River Wye.
I always find that it is in the Autumn and Spring or when under snow that the magic of this impressive abbey is always at its best.
It is undoubtedly a perfect ruin in a perfect setting.