Easter 2011: Guisborough Priory

(Easter 2011)

Continuing the monastic flavour, we went off to Guisborough to have a look around the ruins of the Augustinian priory there. Much less survives here than at Mount Grace, but what does is still pretty spectacular. There appears to be a small army of volunteers keeping the gardens in check, including a large cottage-garden area with a beautifully restored and oddly huge dovecote in the middle. Much of what is left has been robbed out - presumably as building materials for the village that appears to have grown up in the forecourt of the priory. The great eastern window is still in tact, however, along with part of the cloister; the quality of the building work is indicative of the kind of wealth and status enjoyed by the priory during its life. The window looks very strange, standing as one great wall despite the disappearance of its supporting structures.

A lime grove has been planted in an area beside the priory known as the monks' walk; the limes, the tallest (and, as any palynologist will tell you, a very old) variety of deciduous tree in Britain, stand guard over a memorial garden where the remains exhumed from beneath the priory church during excavations there. The clearing in which they are buried is surrounded by carved pieces of stone from the priory, beautifully maintained flowerbeds and a woodland garden. The ground is covered (at this time of the year) with bluebells and wild alliums, and the dappled sunlight spills through the lime trees that appear to have formed their own cathedral of wood about the burial ground. I honestly cannot think of a more peaceful or beautiful place to be buried in all this world.The woodland garden has been very skillfully planned to provided teaching and meeting areas with seats made from sawn up logs, natural habitats for insects and fungus and a general area in which volunteers can relax. It seemed that every time I turned around in the garden I found some new secret place amongst the leaves and flowers. It was a little like being in my own head - in that it was more or less how I imagined parts of the world I'm writing about. There was even an ancient and wonderfully rusty garden incinerator tucked away against one of the walls.When the priory shut for the night we had a brief foray into the churchyard next door, which has some of the most interesting gravestones I've seen in a while (sorry, I know I have bizarre hobbies), including an amazing carving of a skull-bat (probably soemthing to do with the idea of 'king-death'). One stone simply had initials on... their mourners probably couldn't afford more, but it's that grave that I remember most out of all the beautifully carved specimens surrounding it. How perverse of me.

We also had a nosey through a hedge at a church school that was set up in the Elizabethan period, which also had some intriguing architecture (in this case, largely obscured by the hedge) and was quite beautiful. In a nearby field we were astonished to find an entire colony of llamas (no, really), who seemed monumentally uninterested in a party of strange bipeds who were stood waving at them... There was a wonderful moment when I turned around to find Poom attempting to attract their attention using semaphore, but unfortunately all our attempts at communication were spurned.

A good day, though, all in all - leading to a large volume of photographs appearing on (you guessed it) my dA profile.

Photographs: The extraordinary east window through which you can just see the distant dovecote; the lime grove memorial garden; meet me amongst the wild alliums; the Almighty Skull-Bat and the lonely initials; no, really: llamas!

Easter 2011: Mount Grace Priory

(Easter 2011)

With the beautiful sunshine it seemed foolish to be inside on such a nice day and once everyone had let their lunch settle we drove out to Mount Grace Priory, a spectacularly in-tact Carthusian house in North Yorkshire - listening to the Young 'Uns on the way. It's a beautifully kept site, with stately manor gardens, a lot of chickens, the restored 17th century manor house (in the guest hall of the abbey) and the abbey ruins themselves.

The abbey began life as a Carthusian charterhouse in 1398 and is therefore of an unusual design for a monastery. Most monastic orders lived communally, but the Carthusians chose to live in individual cells; really, they were more like hermits who came together only for protection - they tended to keep their worship separate too, only meeting together in the church for matins, mass and vespers. The church, therefore was quite small and plain, reflecting the small amount of time the monks spent in there, while the cells were in fact small houses - actually, not that small. Each monk was entitled to a living / eating area, a small and very well lit scriptorium, a small but cosy bedroom and an upstairs workroom. The cells all had a garden which the monk maintained, along with an enclosed private cloister. During the nineteenth century one of the cells was reconstructed to a very high standard based on available information. It's really cool!

Unusually for the time there was also running water, including an outside lavatory over a channel of running water. Apparently the Carthusians were experts at plumbing, particularly the provision of clean drains and running water, and their Houses have gained something of a name for it. Mount Grace was fed by three wells built on the freshwater springs from the hillside above the Priory. This water would then be collected in and distributed from a water tower at the centre of the Cloister using a system of lead pipes and drainage channels.

The abbey was built, expanded and rebuilt in several stages during its life, leaving a wonderful series of building traces across the site; the chronology built up from archaeological investigations on the site is well worth a look. Some time after the suppression of the house during the reign of the opportunistic Henry VIII the site was taken over by Thomas Lascelles in 1654, and he rebuilt the abbey guest house into a fine example of a seventeenth century Manor house, much of which has now been restored. A fine section of red painted plaster has been identified and left exposed to provide visitors with a glimpse of what at least part of the manor house would have looked like.

We had a great time clambouring about the ruins in the unexpected April sunshine - Mount Grace Priory is well worth the visit. Again, got loads of great pictures (well, I think so anyway), which can be found on my dA profile.

Photographs: the woodland surrounding the priory; the bedroom in the reconstructed monk's cell; one of the wells or spring houses; Peter trying out the facilities; the Usual Suspects.

All facts have been mercilessly stripped from the information boards on site and the far superior guide book written by English Heritage.