St. Mary's Abbey

Now that the weather is turning, it's time to catch up on all of the great stuff York has to offer...

Not to be left out, York has its own ruined abbey. It's now a rather prominent landscape feature in the Yorkshire Museum Gardens and the occasional picnic spot for moms and rebellious teens. The nice thing about this abbey is that it's close and it's free. Depending on how I go, I can walk past it on my trip home from the city centre.



St. Mary's Abbey was originally founded c1055 as a Benedictine abbey dedicated to St. Olave aka Olaf, King of Norway. That's a Viking dude. It's old. Real old.

According to wikipedia,

The abbots of St Mary's were said to be very decadent and the abbey featured heavily in the early medieval ballads of Robin Hood (with the abbot usually as Robin Hood's nemesis)... St Mary's was once the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England and the abbots were amongst some of the wealthiest landowners.

The wealth and greed of this abbey was its downfall–on several occasions. The name of the main street stretching from my house into the center of York is Bootham. Logically I guess, this name arose from the presence of many booths along the medieval main drag. Similar to the relationship of Mosques and bazaar's, the abbey owned the booths and rented them to vendors to make some dough. The abbey's wealth became so great and the people's standard of living so poor, that the people revolted–I think there might have even been some pitchforks involved. The details are sketchy, but it ended with the abbey building huge walls that connected to the city walls to keep the people out. It effectively became an annex of the city. Today its walls are easily mistaken for the city walls.


The wealth of St. Mary's also drew the eye of Henry VIII and the building came tumbling down. Unlike the Minster, St. Mary's was connected to a monastery so he had an excuse. The ruins, like others, are stunning.




The foundations of the building have been excavated to give you an idea how large it was in its last rendition. Excavated parts of the other buildings, including the Chapter House, can be seen in situ in the basement of the Yorkshire Museum.


This is a view of the abbey standing at what I think is the back of the apse.


Pretty nice. And now us poor peons can see it whenever we want.