RIEVAULX ABBEY, YOKSHIRE, ENGLAND STOCK PHOTOS, STOCK PICTURES & PHOTO ART PRINTS

Stock photos gallery of Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, England, landmarks & travel sights. Rievaulx Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey headed by the Abbot of Rievaulx. It is located in the village of Rievaulx near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, England. Rievaulx Abbey was founded in 1132 by twelve monks from Clairvaux Abbey as a mission centre for the colonisation of the north of England and Scotland. It was the first Cistercian abbey in the north. With time it became one of the great Cistercian abbeys of Yorkshire, second only to Fountains Abbey in fame.

The abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538. At that time there were said to be 72 buildings occupied by only an abbot and 21 monks, attended by 102 servants, with an income of £351 a year. It also had a prototype blast furnace at Laskill, producing cast iron as efficiently as a modern blast furnace; according to Gerry McDonnell (archeometallurgist of the University of Bradford), the closure of Rievaulx delayed the Industrial Revolution for two and a half centuries.

Henry ordered the buildings to be rendered uninhabitable and stripped of any valuables such as lead. The abbey site was granted to the Earl of Rutland, one of the Henry’s advisers, until it passed to the Duncombe family.
In the 1750s Thomas Duncombe III beautified the estate by building the terrace with two Grecian-style temples; these temples, now called Rievaulx Terrace & Temples, are in the care of the National Trust. The ruins of the abbey are still standing and are now in the care of English Heritage.

Buy all the stock photos in this gallery on line as Royalty Free or Rights managed stock photo. The stock pictures & stock images are all high resolution digital stock photos made award winning professional photographer Paul Williams.

Photo Art prints are also available to buy on line in large to small print formats for framing as art works for home, office art , or commercial art.