Terrific Tintern

Tintern Abbey today is a ruin,
in the beautiful Wye valley in south east Wales,
close to the English border...

It once was a place of worship
and a living 'village' full of monks.

It was built on a grand scale,
but fell into disrepair following the
dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536.

Today is is a tourist attraction, partly because of its grandeur,
partly because of it's location in a magnificent setting.

Some of the stonework is being replaced.
The renewed stone gives you much more of an idea of
how beautiful it must have looked when it was built.
The stone used for the carved areas is much softer
(and easier to carve) than the stone used for walls,
but this means it weathers and loses the detail
and eventually wears thin enough
in places to lose it's strength.

A carved piece which probably formed part of a vaulted ceiling.
There were similar pieces nearby,
with different designs.
Near the gift shop there is a display of many
pieces of carved stone which all originally came
from a screened carved 'wall' within the Abbey.

Maybe one day they will put all the pieces together
and renew the missing parts.

The main doors leading into the Abbey. A smaller door has been cut into the large door on the left, as the large doors were too big and heavy to open on an everyday basis.

The same doors from the inside

Tintern Abbey is absolutely enormous.
If you click on the image above,
you will see a human wearing a blue coat.

She will give you an idea of the
scale of the remains of the Abbey.

JMW Turner thought it beautiful enough to paint it in the late 1700s:

http://tinyurl.com/24wa2l

and around the same time,
William Wordsworth found it inspiring and wrote a poem:

http://www.tintern.org.uk/wordswor.htm

This window is massive, and stunning.
Imagine how beautiful it must have been,
with stained glass panels, and the light streaming through,
it must have made the interior space dance with colour.

Ye olde serving hatch!

This is where the monks
washed (left) and stored (right) the dishes.

A view through some unrenovated windows

Oh, I just had to take another picture through a window.

I find them fascinating.
It must be symbolic of something,
but I don't know what it means!!!!