North Yorkshire: Was I a Carthusian in a former life?

Leaving Rosedale Abbey (previous post here), we stopped off at the small town of Helmsley. Nothing much had changed since our last visit – the cute little touristy shops were all open for business, the bookshop was open, and Mark made a beeline for the butcher’s for a pork pie.

Helmsley Castle

We did revisit Helmsley Castle whilst in town. It’s been nice to combine new places with places we’ve been to before on this trip.

We were pleased to see that the car park in Helmsley that allows overnight motorhome parking was fully operational. We didn’t stay though; not knowing how “back to normal” everything would be, we’d booked onto the camp site at Thirsk Racecourse for two nights.

Mount Grace Priory

Mount Grace Priory was a real highlight of the trip. It combines a Carthusian monastery (“Charterhouse”) founded in 1398 with a 17th century mansion that was refurbished and remodelled in an Arts and Crafts style circa 1900. We’d specifically left Mount Grace to the second week of the trip as indoor spaces would be reopening that week. As it turned out, we couldn’t go round the house anyway as bats have somehow got inside during lockdown! We did note that they’d managed to open the English Heritage shop on the ground floor of the building though….

Luckily, the monastery more than made up for not being able to visit the house – and the bats have given us a handy excuse to revisit at a later date!

The photo above shows the back of the mansion and the monastery church. The church only needed to be small due to the slightly unusual lifestyle of the Carthusian monks. Basically, they lived in isolation in “cells”, attending church only twice a day (instead of the seven services that other orders had to attend) – and when they went to church they had to pull their hoods up so as to discourage communication! There was one communal meal per week, with no talking allowed.

The English Heritage staff member on duty at the entrance gave us an excellent potted history of the place. When she got to the part about the daily routine of the monks, she noted that it was all “very very strange”. Funny, I thought, I’d just been thinking how good it all sounded….

According to the rule of St Benedict, the monks were supposed to spend their time in prayer, reading, and manual work. That doesn’t mean they were digging ditches, though. They had “lay brothers” (or “lay mugs” as Mark calls them) to do the real donkey work. Evidence from the site shows that the monks did things like book binding and weaving to get their “manual work” tick in the celestial box. I’ve always fancied myself as a colouring-in monk. I was starting to wonder by this point whether I might have been a Carthusian in a former life…..

There were about 25 monks at the monastery’s height, living in seclusion in “cells” around the great cloister:

At this point, things got even better! One of the “cells” was refurbished / reconstructed in the early 20th century.

I keep writing “cell” as the living accommodation really wasn’t what you’d associate with the word. Each monk had a really cute little detached cottage. Yep, I can definitely see myself pottering around one of these in a former life!

On the ground floor, they had a living room, a study and a bedroom. A dinky little staircase led up to a workroom on the first floor. Awesome! They’re not completely making it up in the reconstruction either – we could identify a very similar layout in the non-reconstructed “cells”.

The monks were apparently allowed to grow whatever they wanted to in the private gardens behind their individual “cells”. They even had a cloister-like construction running along one side of the garden to their own private loo (with running water):

I really can’t find any fault with the whole arrangement. It may seem “very very strange” to some modern eyes, but I thought it was brilliant. Plenty of peace and quiet to get on with the colouring-in, a nice little patio to sit and read books on, a bit of praying in your own time and food delivered to your door……

The L-shaped hole in the wall by the front door of the cells is so you didn’t even have to look at or converse with the delivery boy (one of the “lay mugs”) when he brought your dinner….

Mark gets some Good News

I should record that Mark got some very good news indeed on the day we visited Mount Grace – he’s agreed a sale of his house! His long-term tenants moved out in February and he decided it was time to sell up. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it all goes through OK (not that there’s any reason why it shouldn’t).

Richmond Castle

Richmond Castle is another location we’d saved for the second week of our trip when indoor spaces would be open again. A very good museum told us all about the history of Richmond Castle, built on a huge estate (the “Honour of Richmond”) granted by William the Conqueror to our old friend Alan the Red sometime after 1071. The tall keep was added to the castle around 1160:

To the right of the keep is the cell block in which a number of conscientious objectors were imprisoned during the First World War. The story of the “Richmond 16”, sent to France in 1916 to make an example of them (in France, the penalty for refusing to obey orders would be death), made for particularly unpleasant reading.

The highlight of Richmond Castle for me has to be the tiny 11th century St Nicholas’s Chapel:

The small red figures in the River Swale in the photo below are from the Environment Agency. Multiple vehicles had arrived at lunchtime and parked in the same car park as us, then their occupants spent absolutely ages kitting themselves out in drysuits etc. They then proceeded to the river where they were to be seen happily whizzing down the small rapids before swimming to the side and walking back up for another go…. Some kind of training course or team-building exercise presumably.

Easby Abbey

From Richmond Castle, it was a short (1.5 mile?) walk along the river to Easby Abbey, a Premonstratensian (“White Canons”) abbey founded in the 1150s. There isn’t a huge amount left – it would have been difficult to work out the original layout without the on-site information boards.

The best part of the ruined abbey was undoubtedly the late 13th century refectory:

We’re quite used to notice boards informing us that the downfall of the abbey we’re visiting came during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. At Easby Abbey, though, the bad news doesn’t end there:

St Agatha’s Church

St Agatha’s Church is right next to the ruins of Easby Abbey and actually predates it by a few years.

The interior is amazing, and includes some very impressive 13th century wall paintings (admittedly “restored” in the 1990s):

The featured image for this post (a 13th century “Peace, Maaaaaan”?) is another of the wall paintings in the church.

This is the bottom half of the wall painting you can see to the left in the photo above, showing the descent from the cross and emtombment of Christ:

“You’ll never wake him up with smelling salts” muttered Mark, “he’s deeeeeeeed”. Thankfully, St Agatha’s was spared a thunderbolt from above at this remark…..

On the right of the photo of the interior of the church is a replica of the Easby Cross, which was found in pieces, having been broken up and used as building materials (as you do). The information in the Church says that it’s late 7th or early 8th century; the information board outside says that it dates from around the year 800. Given the discrepancy, let’s just say it’s very old….

There’s a worn figure of Christ and some apostles on the front but I really liked the designs on the back and the side (difficult to photograph as they’ve placed the replica a bit too close to the wall….). The original is in the V&A Museum in London – one to hunt out next time we venture to the big city….

As if 13th century wall paintings and the Easby Cross weren’t enough, there’s also an early Norman font dating back to around 1100 which we were told was one of the oldest in the country:

All good stuff and well worth a visit.

Kirkham Priory

After an overnight stop at the Richmond Hargill House Caravan & Motorhome Club Site (not one we’ll rush back to due to its proximity to the A66) we had quite a long drive to Kirkham Priory, which is out to the East of York.

Kirkham Priory is an Augustinian priory founded around 1130 by Walter Espec, who went on to found Rievaulx Abbey (Cistercian) a couple of years later. There’s nothing quite like hedging your bets….

There’s really not a huge amount left. The 13th century presbytery, which would apparently have rivalled that at Rievaulx, is almost entirely gone:

Again, it’d be hard to work out the layout without the information boards. The cloisters aren’t obvious, although the arched surround of the laver (where the monks washed their hands) is still there:

The most impressive surviving part of Kirkham Priory is the gatehouse, which you can see for free!

Wharram Percy

It was only a short drive from Kirkham Priory to Wharram Percy, which is probably England’s best-known deserted medieval village. The population moved away or was evicted between the mid 15th and early 16th centuries as the high price of wool led the landowner to move the land from growing crops to grazing for sheep (a similar story to the later Scottish Clearances….).

Having seen photos of the church before, we had naively expected that there would be more to see…. The village itself was on the hillside to the left of the church. It’s been excavated but covered over again, so all you can see is lumps and bumps in the grass. There are information boards, which gave us an idea of what was once there.

Overall, it was worth a visit and the 0.75 mile walk from the car park, just don’t expect to see a medieval street plan and the foundations of stone houses when you get there….

York

From Wharram Percy, it was on to York Rowntree Park for the final three nights of the trip. We’ve been to York quite a few times in the past, so this wasn’t exactly a voyage of discovery. We did go for a walk in the bluebell woods up near Helmsley with friends:

The big discovery of the trip in York itself was the Grade 1 listed Church of Holy Trinity, tucked away off Goodramgate in the city centre. I’d never even known it was there, let alone seen it open to visitors.

It still has its seventeenth century box pews inside, which is extremely unusual:

The place is just packed with interesting bits and pieces to discover, my favourite being the gravestone set into the floor commemorating a Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles II.

Pies and Home

All good things have to come to an end. We just had time for Mark to scamper to his absolute favourite purveyor of pork pies, then it was time to pack up and head for home.

We’re now just waiting for our second covid jab appointments to come through (Astrazeneca for Mark, Pfizer for me), then we’ll be off again…..