Tintern Abbey

Wonderfully romantic with a fascinating history

Tintern is famous for its abbey and for the poets and painters such as Wordsworth and Turner who visited it two hundred years ago in the Romantic period. It is indeed a wonderfully romantic place, lying on the Welsh side of the winding valley of the River Wye between Chepstow and Monmouth. But it also has a fascinating history which is not often known to the many visitors who come here to enjoy its picturesque beauty. 
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The River Wye has been a major thoroughfare from the Roman times, and it is said that the Viking longships rowed up the river as far as Monmouth. With the roads in the area made difficult by the hilly terrain, in more recent centuries the Wye has been a busy commercial waterway carrying coal, wood, charcoal, iron ore, and stone, and there was regular trading with Bristol. The main vehicles in the river trade were flat bottomed ‘trows’ which could weigh up to 100 tons, and the remains of various wharfs can still be seen along the river. Fishing has always been important, too, and at low tide various weirs become visible along the river which were built to trap fish.  
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During the mediaeval period there were prolonged struggles between Welsh Princes and English Kings, and a famous battle was won in 1404 by the Welsh Prince, Owain Glyndwr at Craig y Dorth about seven miles away on the southern outskirts of Monmouth.

By the time of the Norman conquest of Britain in the 11th century Tintern was a remote and rather desolate place, and it was these qualities which attracted a group of Cistercian monks from France. The Cistercians, who were an offshoot of the ancient Benedictine order, were expanding rapidly in this period, and they brought with them the ideals of the simple life of spiritual discipline and of hard work (The motto of St Benedict was: ‘Laborare est orare’ – ‘To work is to pray’). 

The life of the monks was hard, though perhaps not conspicuously so by comparison with the standards of the day. The daily routine, which began at 1.30 a.m. in the summer, comprised eight periods of chanting and prayer in the abbey church, with intervening periods of work and study. The two daily meals were vegetarian, though meat and fish were allowed for the sick and the old.   
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The abbey church itself was built twice over. The first, which was modest and simple in accordance with the ideals of the order, was constructed in 1131, and the activities of the abbey helped to regenerate the area and to encourage the growth of local economic life, particularly in the Angiddy Valley which branches off the River Wye near the abbey. The religious life of the village was served by both St Mary’s church, Chapel Hill (the remains of a Victorian rebuild can be seen on the hill above the Abbey), and St Michael’s in Tintern Parva.

The second abbey church, of which you see the remains today, was built a couple of hundred years later on the same site. It is a much grander structure with soaring gothic arches, windows with delicate tracery, and surrounded by substantial outbuildings including the cloisters where much of the life of the abbey community took place, chapter house, library, refectory, dormitories, and infirmary. It housed over a hundred choir monks, who were ordained priests, and lay brothers who did the ‘housework’. Many local people were employed in building and agricultural work.

Following Henry VIII’s dispute with the Pope over his divorce, the dissolution of the monasteries (of which there were nearly a thousand in Britain at that time) was begun in 1536, and the buildings and land of Tintern Abbey were granted to Charles Herbert, Earl of Worcester. The remaining monks, twelve in number, were pensioned off. The neglected fabric of the abbey crumbled away over time and much of its stone fabric plundered for local construction work.   

The closure of the Abbey in 1536 might have signaled a steady decline in Tintern’s fortunes, but matters improved dramatically in 1568 when the first brass works in Britain was established in Tintern by Queen Elizabeth as a monopoly for the production of cannon and wire. Shares were held by Herbert family and by Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher and Lord Chancellor of England under James I.
An ambitious programme of conservation
Archaeological excavations are beginning on site to inform an ambitious five-year programme of essential conservation works to the walls of the great abbey church. This will address natural erosion and weathering to the soft, 750-year-old sandstone masonry, the church having been closed to visitors while repairs are being planned and surveys and supporting investigations undertaken by a team of leading
specialists.
The conservation works will require a very high and heavy scaffold to reach the weathered and crumbling sandstone of the upper walls of the church. Before the scaffold is installed, we have commissioned Black Mountains Archaeology and ArchaeoDomus to undertake archaeological evaluations of its footprint, starting at the east end.
This will help us to understand the potential impact of the scaffolding on previously unexplored buried archaeology within and around the church and will enable our engineers to adjust its design to protect significant archaeology or prevent uprights from collapsing into voids or soft earth. Along with a programme of building analysis, historical research and geophysical survey, the results of the excavations will be made publicly available at the end of the project and will greatly enhance our knowledge of Tintern and aid its future management and conservation.
Subject to what is found the first phase of excavations will end in late June 2023 and it is hoped that conservation works to the east end of the church will begin later in 2023.
Tintern Abbey excavation suggests poor people were later buried alongside lords
Archaeologists surprised to find graves of ordinary locals in place known as final resting place of rich and powerful
By Steven Morris, The Guardian, Thursday 4 January 2024

In the heyday of the wonderful church, it was used as the final resting place for the rich and powerful: high-ranking clergy, wealthy landowners, lords who guarded the borderlands.
But excavation work carried out at Tintern Abbey has found that after the gothic masterpiece fell into ruin following the dissolution of the monasteries, ordinary local people took advantage of the chance to bury their dead within the sacred – and beautiful – grounds.

To the surprise of archaeologists and historians, two graves that have been examined at the abbey in south-east Wales at the start of a major restoration project were found to contain the remains of an adult and two children who had clearly lived tough, unprivileged lives.

“It’s an amazing story,” said Gwilym Hughes, the head of CADW, which protects Wales’s historic buildings. “There was this switch from this being a grand place where the elite are buried to one being used by people who are on the edge of communities. Tintern was the resting place of the great and good in the medieval period – the benefactors, the patrons, the marcher lords. This appears to have changed dramatically in the middle of the 16th century with the dissolution. It was still used as a sacred place for burial, this time not by the elite, but by people who appear to have been marginalised by society. It’s fascinating.”

Archaeological investigations began on the site in the summer. CADW has launched a multimillion-pound five-year conservation project to protect Tintern’s soft medieval stonework, which has been eroded over the centuries. Archaeological investigations began on the site in the summer to help understand what lay beneath the ground and so avoid damaging any ancient fragile features and ensure that the scaffolding that will be erected has a stable base.

Artefacts dating from the late 13th century to the modern period have been discovered, including rare medieval window glass, floor tiles and pottery, and coins from the reign of Henry III onwards. Most graves have been left intact, but it was felt that 18 had to be excavated. Of these, three have been looked at more closely and yielded some surprising insights. Richard Madgwick, a reader in archaeological science at Cardiff University, said: “We have only analysed a few burials from the abbey so far, but these are already providing unparalleled new insights.”

They include a person who was wrapped in a cow’s hide in an impressive tomb – clearly someone of high status – but the more interesting were found just outside the main body of the church. One grave contained the remains of a woman who appeared to have been disabled and may have died in her 30s or 40s. Another contained the skeletons of two children, aged about one and five, who showed signs of chronic ill health potentially related to poor nutrition or disease. Madgwick said the woman’s grave was shallow and appeared to have been hastily cut, suggesting she had been buried secretly. “The key thing is, this burial postdates the dissolution, and this was probably someone who wouldn’t have been able to normally access a prestigious burial spot. It’s clear the abbey really retained special status to some people.

“It conjures up images of cherished family, of someone who had been cared for though life going to some effort to bury her in the best place possible.” It is the first time that the abbey church, long celebrated in literature and art, has been investigated in such detail for a century. Madgwick said: “I thought our main window would be looking at higher-status individuals – the monks, the clergy – but this is giving us the chance to see how ordinary people were using the abbey after the dissolution.” The remains will be returned once the work is complete.