Egglestone Abbey
The Story
Egglestone Abbey is in easy walking distance of Barnard Castle and is well worth the visit. As an artist it sets my mind running wild. It is so full of middle ages romance. I see lords and ladies wandering the grounds, but as so often the truth is not so romantic at all. It was a monastery and a very poor one at that, the abbots lived in relative poverty and were given tax relief because of it. It was very much the poor relation of the Yorkshire Abbeys.
Originally the Abbey was founded between 1195 and 1198 by the de Mutton family as a daughter house of Easby Abbey. The order was Premonstratensian, founded by Sit Norbet in France in 1121. They adopted the rules of St Augustine and drew on ideas from the much stricter Cistercians.
Eggleston Abbey itself was founded by the de Moulton family whose title passed to the Dacres by marriage in 1314. The canons chose the site for the building of the abbey because of its close proximity to a river (tat is said to have been very rich in salmon and the ready supply of local stone.
The endowment provided for the cannons, was so small it remained extremely, poor it could hardly maintain the required 12 canons. Indeed there was an inquiry to discover if the status of Abbey could be maintained. Somehow it was. The Abbey suffered terribly at the hands of the Scottish invaders and the rowdy English army who were billeted there in 1346 as they prepared for the forthcoming battle of Neville's Cross. Despite all of this the cannons did not stay within the Abbey struggling to look after themselves. Dressed in white hoods (they were known as the White Canons ) they were easily spotted as they preached to the community and took on pastoral work distributing food and drink to those in need.
Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries signaled the end of the building's life as a monastic building. In 1548 the lands were granted to Robert Strelly who converted some of the building into a great private house. However like so many great building this too was abandoned in the mid nineteenth century. It is the tree story section of the building that can be seen in the painting that formed the great mansion.
However it does have one famous link and that is to John Wycliff of the Wycliff Bible fame. He was the leading force in creating the first Bible to be written in English rather than Latin. It is thought he would have received his early education at the Abbey. We have no way of knowing but maybe the poor life of the abbots may have played a part in his dislike for the wealth of many abbeys and the church as a whole at the time. However he came by his opinions he was a founding thinker in challenging the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church at the time, and is seen as an early light of reformation.
This building has a long and rich history that will inspire many stories maybe many with a hint of truth to them a seed of learning. It now sits in the midst of the working farm land above the river that generates so much tourism for the area. Again an echo of a working (even if monastic) life now looked on as tourist pastoral idyll. These middle sections of the Tees hold so much history captured in beautify scenery, its always worth scraping beneath the surface a little.
The table tomb that now stands in the centre of the church section has arcaded sides to Sir Ralph Bowes who died 1482. In 1770 Sir Thomas Robinson sold the Abbey to John Morrit of Rokeby Hall. At some point stone from the abbey was used to pave the stable yard at Rokeby Park. Despite this vandalism in 1925 Morritts descendants placed the ruin in the guardianship of the state, and returned a notable collection of stonework including the tomb of Sir Ralph Bowes, which can be seen in the painting.
The painting itself was done over seven month from January 2021 and was a constant in the background of covid isolation and personal family illness and bereavement, along with a frantic house move with a first exhibition mixed in. The work is another search of realistic imagination with a mix of painterly looseness and deliberate detail where I feel appropriate. I continue to look for the lace in the branches of naked trees. Hope I am getting there.
Something must have gone right with it as it sold before the exhibition was put together. As my first large piece I am happy with it, I hope the people of Teesdale also like it.