Roche Abbey, Yorkshire, England

Roche Abbey was founded in 1147 as the daughter house of Newminster Abbey in Northumberland, making it also a ‘grand daughter’ of Fountains Abbey.  An abbot, 12 monks and 20 lay brothers, walked from Newminster Abbey in Northumberland to settle in wooden buildings, which had been constructed for them on the site that would become Roche Abbey.

The land that was used had been gifted to Newminter Abbey by two local landowners, Richard de Bully, and Richard, son of Turgis. They each owned land in the valley, on either side of the stream, which was given to the monastery.  They became the new monastery’s patrons and protectors.

The church was the first building to be built and was completed by 1170.  The two tall sections of the church ruins (which now look like towers), show the transition from late Romanesque to early Gothic architecture.  The stone used for the buildings came from an on-site quarry, the remains of which are uphill and north of the monastery.

At the time of the Dissolution, in 1538, an inventory of the Abbey was taken.  It was noted that there were 22 monks living at Roche, as well as around the same number of servants.  The inventory also notes that the Abbey owned 80 oxen, 5 carthorses, 120 sheep, and 40 pigs, as well as 7 orchards, dovecotes, fruit gardens, and ponds. 

There exists an eyewitness account of the dismantling of Roche Abbey. Once the monks were dismissed and given a meagre pension, Henry VIII’s agents arrived to make the buildings unusable.  Although a planned and orderly dismantling and auction of the abbey’s goods had been the intention, this soon turned into a free-for-all pillage by the local people. The eyewitness states:

‘It would have pitied any heart to see what tearing up of the lead there was, and plucking up of boards and throwing down of the rafters.  And when the lead was torn off and cast down into the church and the tombs in the church were all broken and all things of value were spoiled, plucked away or utterly defaced to the uttermost…Pewter vessels were stolen away and hidden in the rocks, and it seemed that every person was intent upon filching and spoiling what he could. ‘

When the writer asks the eyewitness:

         ‘How come it to pass you was so ready to destroy and spoil the thing you thought well of?’, 

 he responded,

         ‘What should I have done? Might I not as well as others have some profit of the spoil of the abbey? For I did see all would away and therefore I did as others did.’