Tintern Abbey
Wordsworth's most famous poem about Tintern Abbey never mentions the abbey. The ruin still became a star of the Romantic age, and it is older than most people guess.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Tintern, on the River Wye in the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire
- Founded
- 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow
- Order
- Cistercian, the 'white monks'
- Claim to fame
- First Cistercian abbey founded in Wales, and the second in Britain
- Present church
- Rebuilt in the Gothic style by Roger Bigod: begun in 1269, consecrated in 1288 and completed in 1301
- Dissolved
- 1536, under Henry VIII
- Building stone
- Local sandstone, which gives the ruin its warm grey-red tone
- Cared for by
- Cadw, after the Crown bought the site in 1901
The poem that forgot to mention the abbey
Ask people what Wordsworth wrote about Tintern Abbey and many will recite a line or two. The poem's full original title is 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798'. It describes the wooded Wye, the cliffs and the smoke rising from cottages. The abbey itself never appears. Wordsworth wrote it in July 1798, after walking in the valley with his sister Dorothy, and it closed the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. It still did a lot for the place's fame. By then, though, the ruins were already a destination.
A Norman lord and a very quiet order
On 9 May 1131 Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, founded the abbey. He brought monks from L'Aumône Abbey, near Blois in the Loire Valley of central France, and Tintern became the first Cistercian house in Wales. Only Waverley in Surrey, founded in 1128, was older in Britain. The Cistercians wanted remote, simple places where they could live by the Rule of St Benedict, working the land and keeping long silences. A wooded bend of the Wye suited them. The monks farmed, and lay brothers did much of the heavy work. The abbey grew rich and powerful over the next two centuries, but not with the splendour of its later buildings alone.
The church that Roger Bigod built
The ruin visitors see today is mostly a rebuilding from the late 13th century. Roger Bigod, Lord of Striguil, paid for a magnificent new church in the Decorated Gothic style. Work began in 1269, the church was consecrated in 1288, and construction was completed in 1301. Its delicate window tracery is the abbey's glory. The great west window still holds its elaborate stone pattern against the sky, long after the glass has gone. The huge east window has lost much of its tracery, but its towering opening still frames the hills beyond. The abbey church was built in the shape of a cross, and you can still trace that plan in the ruins. Look up and there is no roof, only open air and the wooded hills beyond the arches.
How Henry VIII turned a church into a ruin
Tintern surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners in September 1536, among the first Welsh monasteries to go in the Dissolution. The monks left, and the roofs came off. Lead was valuable, and it was stripped, sold and melted down. The weather finished the job, and the buildings fell into a slow, picturesque decay. Over time the abbey became surrounded by cottages, ironworks and other ordinary working life of the valley.
Why Georgian tourists queued up for a ruin
In the 18th century people began to look at ruins differently, and the abbey was perfect for the new taste. William Gilpin's 1782 book on the Wye described its beauty and helped launch the Wye Tour, a boat trip downriver from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow that took in Tintern. Gilpin loved the setting but was fussy about the architecture. He thought the gable ends too regular and joked that a mallet might improve them. Nobody took him up on it. Painters followed. JMW Turner visited in 1792 and 1793, and two celebrated watercolours of the abbey's interior were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1794, helping fix its image as a Romantic ruin.
What to look for when you're there
The abbey church has been closed to visitors during Cadw's major conservation programme, so start by admiring it from outside, especially the west front and its great window. The tracery changes its pattern as you move around it. Then explore the accessible monastic ruins around the church: the cloister, the chapter house, the monks' dormitory and the infirmary. The layout is typical of a Cistercian house, and it shows how a whole community lived around one great church. For the best view of the setting, walk some distance away along the Wye. The ruin looks smaller from there, but you can see why generations of visitors thought it belonged to the valley.
Notable people
- Walter de Clare
- Roger Bigod
- William Wordsworth
- Dorothy Wordsworth
- William Gilpin
- J. M. W. Turner
- Henry VIII
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