One thing we’re not short of in England is ruined abbeys and monasteries – Henry VIII had a lot to answer for – and one that we visited a few years ago was Byland Abbey.
Byland Abbey is in North Yorkshire, a few miles due east of Ampleforth Abbey, and we visited on the same day in 2019. I say visited; we pulled up, I took a few photos, and then we carried on. Compared to other ruined abbeys like Fountains Abbey, there isn’t much of Byland Abbey left now. However, you can see from my photo that it would have a large rose window in its heyday, and this inspired the rose window at York Minster.
Nowadays, Byland Abbey is managed by English Heritage. It’s free to go in, and if you wanted you could probably spend 30 minutes to an hour there. In the summer months, you can see an interesting tiled floor in the old church.
Just be aware that there’s only a very small car park at the site, and bus services through Byland are very infrequent with just three per day from York. There’s no visitor centre, so if you need the toilet, you’ll need to ask nicely at the local pub.
The church is open every day, with regular services that are open to the public. There’s also a new visitor centre, which opened last year, giving the history of the site and offering some activities for children. There is, of course, a tea room.
Ampleforth Abbey Cider
Nowadays, Ampleforth Abbey is probably best known for its cider. The monks have been growing apples on site since the monastery was founded, and now has the largest commercial orchard in the north of England. The cider is produced on site, and is one of my favourites – the visitor centre includes a shop which sells it by the bottle. Alas, whilst tours of the cider mill and orchard used to be on offer, they’re not available at present.
If you’re not the cider-drinking type, non-alcoholic apple juice is also available, as is a beer that’s brewed over our neck of the woods by the Little Valley Brewery, near Hebden Bridge.
Whilst I wouldn’t make a special journey to Ampleforth Abbey, it’s worth stopping off if you’re passing.
On Saturday, Christine and I went to Wakefield, to visit the Hepworth Gallery, a new art gallery and museum built to house the collections of Barbara Hepworth, along with some works by other artists and sculptors inspired by her. The gallery is located next to the River Calder and is in easy walking distance from Wakefield Kirkgate station. Despite costing £35million to build, entry is free, and you can easily spend a couple of hours here.
The architecture of the building is interesting – it’s a thick concrete shell in the 1960s brutalist style, but with a clever use of windows to let in a reasonable amount of light. Of course, the thick concrete walls mean that you probably won’t have a working mobile phone in here.
I didn’t take any pictures inside as photography isn’t allowed (being modern art, most of the works are still under copyright restrictions) but I did take plenty out and around the gallery. It’s sited in an area of Wakefield that is in need of regeneration, so hopefully this will act as a catalyst to get people and businesses into the area.
Across the road is Wakefield Bridge and the Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin, a 14th century chapel on the bridge itself – one of only four in such a location and the oldest surviving example. Although it’s around 650 years old, it is still regularly used for church services. Certainly worth a look if you’re about.
Although I’ve lived in Yorkshire all my life, this is the first time I’ve been to Wakefield, bar passing through on the train, and so we went into the town to have a look around. Parts of the city centre are very run down, although work is going on to regenerate it, including the new Trinity Walk shopping plaza which, like the Hepworth Gallery, opened a few weeks ago. It ties in with a refurbished market, with a striking overall roof.
The city, which is the smallest of the three in West Yorkshire, still has some way to go before it’s looking as nice as Leeds city centre. In particular, the smallest of its two railway stations, Wakefield Kirkgate, was described by the previous secretary of state for transport Lord Adonis as probably the worst ‘medium-large’ station I have seen in Britain[source], and having seen it for myself I can see why – those buildings that are still standing are boarded up, it’s dirty, there’s no staff around, there’s paint peeling off the walls and just looks generally dilapidated. Not a nice welcome to the city. The other station, Wakefield Westgate, whilst not the most pleasant of stations, at least has some amenities and a staff presence.
It’ll be interesting to go back to Wakefield again in a couple of years, once some of the regeneration projects have progressed further. We also didn’t visit the cathedral or the Wakefield Museum, so they’re there for a future visit.
