Egglestone Abbey
This post is dedicated to Yoda the Cat, who we found out passed away about an hour before we got to this site. A beloved member of Lauren's family and who we miss daily. Rest in peace Yodes.
The mission for this leg of our road trip was to follow Ren's family tree and try to visit sites within County Durham that her paternal family had visited as they are all from there. Sadly her great-grandparents and grandparents are no longer with us, so we relied on her dad to fill in the gaps.
Lauren's great-grandad, Albert Hawman, was a steam train driver who was elected to drive the revamped Locomotive No.1. His route would have spanned through Co. Durham and Whitby and he also has a Chrysanthemum named after him. He passed away at 105 years old and was a dear member of our family, and we're pretty sure she gets her love of steam trains (and Whitby) from him.
Thus we decided to try and hit a few of these stops which would have also been her dad's childhood as a little ode to the Hawmans, but we failed as English Heritage have elected to shut lots of sites in winter.
However, we managed one site in this neck of the woods and that was Egglestone Abbey. No idea if any of her lot ever went there, but as it is pretty close to Barnard Castle which was one of Gramps's stops, it was possible. Regardless, we were in the area and that is good enough for us.
Egglestone Abbey, or The Abbey of St Mary and John the Evangelist, was a Premonstratensian Abbey historically within the North Riding of Yorkshire. It is thought due to the oldest document regarding the abbey, that it was founded between 1168 and 1198 by a member of the Multon Family. The evidence, dated in 1198, mentions a fine by Ralph Lenham to Ralph Multon regarding alienated land.
The Abbey was then inhabited by the Premonstratensians who became better known as the White Canons due to their white habit and they followed a code similar to Cistercian monks but did not follow the strict Episcopal discipline. They chose Egglestone as it was an ideal spot for their customs, it had a river nearby for water, it was isolated, and there was plenty of local stone to further its construction.
The original church on the site was extended which was the practice with early monasteries, and then some sections were rebuilt as time went on to turn it into the much grander abbey. Unfortunately, this particular site was not always as grand as it should have been. The isolation the site was picked for scuppered the canons and the abbey struggled financially and had difficulty keeping the number of canons required to keep it running. As it was, it suffered further when both Scottish Invaders and members of the English army mistreated the site in 1346 on their way to the Battle of Neville's Cross. The raids from the Scots were frequent and so first the tax on the abbey was halved and then removed completely as there was nothing left of value there. The when the English used the site to camp the canons had to be compensated due to the damage.
Then came the final nail in the coffin for Egglestone, the Big Bully King. Oh yes, like every other abbey we have been to, Henry VIII dissolved the site in 1540 and the land was given to Robert Strelley in 1548. Strelley decided to convert some of the buildings from the Abbey into a great big private house that was then abandoned in the middle of the 19th century. As a result, a fair bit of the abbey was destroyed in order to pave the stable yard at Rokeby Park, waste not want not as they say. What was left was protected in 1987.
Naturally, when we arrived we were not in the best of moods, but the Abbey did its best to raise our spirits. The site itself is quite large with plenty of remains still standing. There is even a roofed area (be mindful of the bats) and some stairs to a ruined second floor that you are still able to climb. The site also has a tabletop tomb, Sir Rafe Bowes of Streatlam is within, who possibly owned Barnard Castle but no one is sure about him. He must have been fairly important to be buried within the Abbey, even if it was a poor one.
The area is surrounded by farmland which was nice, this was a decent rural spot which felt as though it had the power to transport you back to another era. We saw a few cows and were able to revel in the peace the site allowed us and reflect on our loss. There were lovely views from all angles and it was the best site we could have asked for after some bad news. It was our second to last stop of the day before we hit Egton for the night and we needed the tranquillity.
Haunted? Apparently a wayward monk killed a little girl nearby and both ghosts haunt the abbey, but we didn't get the sense that there was anything here. Perhaps there was though, and they felt our pain and decided to help. Who knows, but we didn't feel anything awful.
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