"The abbey the English loved to hate..." Topic

…Melrose.

Melrose Abbey, in Roxburghshire was part of my very brief first visit to Scotland. It was a little disappointing in that the entire building was surrounded by high security fencing due to safety concerns; it is an old building and bits had recently been falling off.

We had struck across the River Tweed at Norham and were immediately in Scotland – there were no passport controls and everyone seemed friendly. The abbey was re-founded by Cistercians in 1136 but such is the fluid nature of the borders that it was originally founded by ‘English' monks from Lindisfarne in Northumbria. This first monastery was a couple of miles from the present site but was eventually destroyed by the Scots. This, however, would not be the last time the building was destroyed, its position on the disputed borders made it a magnet for attacking armies.

Refounded on the present site by order of King David I of Scotland, building continued over the next 60 years. The site became popular with the Scots aristocracy for burials with Alexander II among the kings and nobles buried here. A lead casket said to contain the heart of Robert the Bruce was found in 1921 but then rediscovered in 1998. His body is buried at Dunfermline.

Melrose Abbey was mostly destroyed by Edward II when his English army invaded in 1322 but was rebuilt under orders from Robert the Bruce – which may explain how his heart ended up under the floor of the chapter house. This heart has been reburied on site yet again under a handsome memorial. In 1385 Melrose was hit again, this time by the English King Richard II but that king did at least contribute something to the cost of rebuilding later. It was still being rebuilt in 1504 when the Scottish King James IV visited.

It was damaged again during the ‘rough wooing' of 1544 when the English again invaded, intent on getting the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, married off to the son of Henry VIII and thus uniting the two kingdoms. War damage led to its decline while Scotland had meanwhile become Protestant. Unlike in England there was no sudden and violent suppression of the Catholic monasteries, the last monk simply died in 1590 and he was never replaced.

Its luck did not change and Melrose was damaged – yet again – by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. There is some indication of cannon damage on its exterior. Part of the building was used as a parish church until 1910 when a new church was built elsewhere in town.

Sir Walter Scott was influential is saving the building's remains. He supervised repairs in the early 19th century. Today it is maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.

The whole set can be seen here including the Robert the Bruce memorial:

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All photos are thumbnails and all open up bigger if double-clicked.

Barry

Impressive buildings, especially considering it was on the border, away from larger cities, and not the seat of a bishop.

Grelber

@Greiber:
You will be surprised how big these non-bishop abbey buildings can be in the UK.
Fountains Abbey is huge and just goes on and on across a big site:

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Barry

Quite interesting, thanks!

To be fair, it has been taken on trust that the cylinder first discovered in 1921 and rediscovered in 1996, based on the conclusions of those who found and reburied it in 1921, (a) contained the remains of a human heart, and (b) this was the heart of King Robert I. It was decided not to conduct tests and "embrace the symbolism" of what is believed to be the only object of its kind discovered at Melrose….

hic jacet arthurus rex

Thanks for the links to Fountains Abbey. I guess it had lots of monks and rents from lots of property coming in, all of which justified the size without worrying about a bishop or being in a big city. Just goes to show they saw things differently back then.

Grelber

Being away from big cities was much of the reason for building it there. Some of the orders wanted to build in a 'wilderness' as part of the monastic hermit tradition. My local abbey was built in a heavily forested region of the English Midlands for the same reason.

Their success meant that they then became a focus for local settlement of the land which ironically meant that they were no longer in a wilderness. This generally meant clearance for agriculture rather than being the kernel of a new town, though that could also happen. Through endowments, the abbey could gain a great deal of land and some of that money went in the construction of substantial buildings. The church, including abbeys and the bishop, was the largest landowner in my county.

In many cases, the distance to large towns meant that even after the dissolution of the English monasteries it was not economic to pillage the stone for use elsewhere. That is why there are some spectacular ruins remaining at e.g. Fountains and Glastonbury. My local abbey was close enough to a couple of places that the stone was taken away leaving little more than foundations. The local community also wasn't rich enough to do as Tewkesbury did and buy the abbey as their parish church.

The village in southwest Scotland where I grew up evolved round a corn mill established by Cistercians from their abbey in the neighbouring valley (the burn here providing greater driving power) the sparsely populated rural parish being granted to the monks in almost its entirety as part of the abbey's endowment in the C12th. There are still more sheep and cattle in the district. About a third of the abbey's main structure is still standing.

"more sheep and cattle _than people_"