The Founding of Tintern Abbey
May 9, 1131
Tintern Abbey was established on this date by the Anglo-Norman nobleman Walter de Clare on the Welsh side of the River Wye on lands given him by Henry I. Great monasteries in the Middle Ages were built by wealthy Christians invested with secular power.
Tintern Abbey was the first Cistercian house founded in Wales. The Cistercians had been founded at Cîteaux in 1098 as a breakaway movement of Benedictines seeking to observe the Rule of St. Benedict more strictly. Henry I welcomed Cistercian houses in his realm.
Four hundred years later, another Henry, the VIII, decided to suppress all monasteries in his realm. Tintern Abbey was surrendered to the king’s men on September 3, 1536; its valuables were sent to the royal treasury, its buildings given to Henry Somerset, Lord of Chepstow, and its lead roofs removed and sold.
The surrounding area became industrialized in 1568 with a wireworks company and charcoal and lime production. In 1803, J. T. Barber wrote of “passing the works of an iron foundry and a train of miserable cottages engrafted on the offices of the Abbey.” Local workers were living in the ruins.
Nevertheless, the ruins of Tintern Abbey were a popular destination for “Romantic” tourism and described in poems, e.g.: “spoiled of all her pride; / Whose mournful ruins fill the soul with awe, / Where once was taught God’s holy saving law” (Rev. Duncomb Davis, 1793); “Thee, Tintern! and thy holy House of Prayer / I musing leave” (Rev. Luke Booker, 1803).
William Wordsworth’s more famous poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), does not even mention the ruins except in the title, nor the prayers nor the monks—a typical modern approach to the ruins of Christendom, indifferent to the worship that “shook, with hymns divine, the heavenly choir.”
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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