Walking here through the grounds of York Minster,
I'm in the shadow of the city's most famous landmark.
And the earliest part of the building, the crypt, was built by the Normans.
On my walk today, I'm going to be looking at how the Normans transformed York
into the political and religious stronghold of the north of England.
In the course of a fascinating century, they brought first terror
and violence to this part of the country, and then long-term economic prosperity.
And they left behind them a legacy that endured.
If you mention the Normans to any true Yorkshireman, you'll probably get an earful.
They have a long memory in these parts,
and what they're remembering in particular is the so-called infamous Harrying of the North.
In the late 1060s, there were a series of uprisings against Norman rule,
and these were repressed by the Normans with terrible cruelty.
Nearly every settlement between York and Durham was destroyed.
The very fields were sowed with salt to destroy agriculture.
100,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands more died of starvation.
There were even reports of people resorting to cannibalism.
The Harrying brought the north under control
in the most brutal and effective manner.
It meant the Normans had achieved what the Saxons never quite managed.
From now on, Yorkshire and Northumberland
would be part of a genuinely unified England,
with the city of York as its regional capital.
There's such an incredible layering of history here at York.
It was the stronghold for the Romans in this part of the country.
It was very important under the Saxons, the Vikings and, of course, the Normans.
And it went on really mattering.
These extraordinary walls were built in the 14th century
and the Minster itself wasn't completed until 1472.
The great walls and Minster are a sign of York's prosperity right across the Middle Ages.
The city benefited from a boom started by the Normans.
On this walk, I'm hoping to see how the invaders
not only conquered and controlled this region,
but inspired faith, commerce, education and technology -
the fabric of a new era for the North.
From York, I'm going to be travelling into rural parts
devastated by the Harrying of the North.
Today, it forms the southern edge of the North York Moors National Park.
My five-mile walk will take me from Helmsley
to the village of Rievaulx,
through an area reignited in the late Norman period,
through the enthusiastic sponsorship of religion.
In particular, by the creation of one of our greatest abbeys.
Today, the Yorkshire countryside is littered with romantic ruins of medieval monasteries,
but before I head out there, I've come here, to the edge of the medieval city of York,
to see where this link between York, the Normans and the monasteries really began.
'York Museum Gardens is where I've arranged to meet Professor Janet Burton,
'the country's foremost authority on the monasteries of Northern England.
'The gardens lie beside the Roman origins of this city -
'the fort of Eboracum.
'But I've come here to see a very different sort of landmark,
'established by our country's next great builders of stone.
'20 years after the massacre of the Harrying, William II, son of the Conqueror,
'granted this site to the Benedictines and started St Mary's Abbey.'
So is it unusual to have such a big monastery so close to the middle of town?
No, it isn't, really.
In the 11th century when St Mary's was founded - the late 11th century -
it was really quite a normal thing to do, to found a monastery,
either within a city, or in a site like this,
just outside the walls of the city.
How are they useful to the King? Why was it in his interest to have this vast abbey in the middle of York?
Primarily, it was the prayers of the monks.
They were the spiritual servicers.
The King looked on monks as spiritual soldiers.
But Abbot Stephen himself, the founder abbot,
wrote a short narrative
on the foundation of St Mary's.
He makes the specific point that William II was quite aware
that York had been a troublesome place.
So when this stone abbey started to rise up here in the late 11th century
within sight of the stone Minster,
and you think of the stone castles that William I had built -
these were all real symbols of royal authority.
What about the link between this abbey and, perhaps, the more famous abbeys to the north?
Many Normans lords, the new aristocracy that settled after the conquest,
they start patronising St Mary's, they grant lands.
So, in one way, they're saying, "If this is the King's abbey,
"we want to show our support for the King
"by supporting his monastery."
But then they go and do the same thing by founding their own monasteries.
They might build a castle, but they also found a monastery.
They get the prayers of the monks,
but they get a visible reminder of their power and their authority.
What about the effect of these monasteries on the population of these parts?
Are these sort of little nuclei of Norman-ness that are slowly making the country more Norman?
I think they were, yes.
William of Malmesbury, the Norman chronicler,
comments on the coming of the Normans and how,
I think he said, in every city and village you could see churches rise up
in a style unknown before. I mean, they were building and they were building big.
Sometimes we get mistaken impressions about monasteries such as St Mary's.
They are thought of as being very inward-looking communities - little oases.
But for all that, monasteries did interact with the communities in which they were located,
through developing their estates, the production of manuscripts, through education.
Often Benedictine abbeys ran schools. St Mary's ran one.
Local people did comment on the importance, as they perceived it,
of monastic houses as providers of education and hospitality
and the provision of charity.
St Mary's would play a role in York's development for 450 years.
And in 1132 it played host to 12 monks,
travelling from Clairvaux Abbey in northeast France.
They represented a radical new group called the Cistercians,
determined to live an austere, self-sufficient lifestyle in the true manner of St Benedict.
They were travelling north, to the area of my walk today,
destined to become the focus of a new community
that would drive development in one of the remotest parts of the country.
And they came at the invitation of the new Norman lord.
The town of Helmsley -
gateway to the vast expanse of the North York Moors.
Wild country, which would have been even more wild
back in the 11th century, following the Harrying of the Normans.
The productivity and the population would have fallen dramatically.
But now the Normans were keen to change all this.
In particular, a man called Walter Espec, who built Helmsley Castle.
50 years after the Harrying, Walter Espec was a rising star.
He was the Justiciar of the North -
effectively, the King's chief minister.
He held lands across Yorkshire and Northumberland
and would go on to lead forces against the Scots at the Battle of the Standard.
But from 1120 onwards, this was Espec's main residence.
Walter Espec was responsible for the building of this East Tower,
well, in fact, the bottom two-thirds of it.
I love the way you can still see the original roof.
It would have been a wonderful home for him and his family.
And the chroniclers tell us that he had a large library of books as well.
So this was a scholar, a military man, and very wealthy as well.
It seems that the erudite Espec was a man of his time
and the late-Norman period was the golden age
for the foundation of monasteries.
This was Espec's opportunity to seal his passage to heaven,
enforce his political dominance, and leave a positive legacy for this troubled region.
My real interest today lies out there on the moors, and that's where I'll be walking.
Because it was out there that Walter Espec gave huge tracts of his lands
to that group of Cistercian monks
that had been staying in St Mary's Abbey in York.
And they would found the first ever Cistercian monastery in the north of England.
And that's where I'm heading.
With Helmsley Castle, Walter Espec had created an awe-inspiring symbol
of his power and control.
His next task was to establish a great institution
to drive Norman colonisation.
But as my walk leaves the town, Espec's impact was more subtle.
He was guardian of the massive areas of royal forest -
land which for the past three centuries has been the grounds of Duncombe Park.
I'll be heading west, following the Ryedale valley upstream
through Walter Espec's moorland estate,
and into the territory which he gifted the Cistercians.
My destination is a small village, hidden at the bottom of Ryedale
and clustered around the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey -
one of Yorkshire's great monastic institutions
and a legacy that would far outlast the Normans.
Back at Helmsley, my walk starts in a legacy of a very different kind -
the back garden of Walter Espec's Castle.
For the past three centuries, this cleared area
has served as the parkland of Duncombe Park - one of the great country estates of Yorkshire.
Duncombe Park was set up by the Duncombe family in the very early 1700s.
Now, they had made all their money in banking. They were new money.
So, in that way, they're an interesting parallel to Walter Espec,
who, of course, in the 11th century, was also a new face.
A man on the make.
It's said that the Norman lords created their own sporting venue right here -
a clearing where moorland beasts were driven in
and then hunted for the entertainment of guests watching from the castle.
And to this day, you can still make out the faint ridge in the land
that once enclosed the hunting area.
Some of the Duncombe oaks today could be as old as this medieval arena.
This is exactly the kind of pile Walter Espec would have built for himself
if he'd been around in the 18th century.
Since 1700, Duncombe Park has sought to celebrate
and indulge in the beauty of the local landscape.
The Cistercians too revelled in the solitude
ensured by the Norman forests and the remote Ryedale valley.
But the monks couldn't succeed without bringing a degree of civilisation to the moors.
Fantastic. This is my first view of this steep valley here called Ryedale.
Rievaulx Abbey lies at the bottom of that, a few miles along here.
My walk's going to take me along the top of this escarpment.
Beautiful views all the way, I hope.
The first thing I'll look at is the first piece of abbey infrastructure that's been left behind.
It's called, on the map, the Medieval Village of Griff.
And this was all part of the abbey's lands.
In 1131, Walter Espec agreed to give away 1,000 acres
of his Yorkshire lands to the arriving Cistercians.
This was but a small donation from the great Norman lord,
but for the 12 pioneering monks, it was enough to establish their own abbey
and remain true to their ideal of self-sufficiency.
'On the flat plateau above the Rye,
'I've come to the land of Griff Farm to meet the team
'who've investigated what took place here
'on the edge of Rievaulx's first grant.'
So, on my ordnance survey map, this is marked as a medieval village.
Is that true?
Yes and no.
I mean, Domesday actually has reference to a vill,
some sort of settlement
on this location.
We haven't produced any evidence of a settlement, have we?
We spent six weeks here a few years back,
getting to grips with the earthworks, to understand what was going on.
Any surprises? Once you look at the layout and start to realise
how the elements of this site relate to each other, you realise it's not a village,
it's a single unit, a farmstead.
The surprise being we confirmed that it was a grange,
not the deserted medieval village mentioned on the maps.
Some of the more substantial buildings are a really good find.
So it's a big prosperous farm, then? Is that what it is?
That's exactly what it is, yes.
It's an monastic farmstead, an outlying monastic farmstead, called a grange.
The building we're in is a barn, we think, from the plan of it and the size of it.
In old French, "grange" means barn.
This is the barn at the heart of the grange.
How contemporary is this to the founding of Rievaulx Abbey?
It was there at the beginning of the foundation.
It was part of original grant from Walter Espec.
There was the grant to the abbey site and the grange land here.
The initial grant was for about the equivalent of 1,000 acres. It wasn't a contiguous area.
It would have been split between parcels of land.
The parcel of land that would have come with Griff as the bequest to the monastery at the outset
would have been about 480 acres -
about half the total land given over to the monastery.
This area is not a blank canvas when the Normans arrive.
It's been used since prehistory.
The name "Griff", which is given to this grange, is a Norse name.
In other words, we've got a Viking community living here,
who are farming a substantial area of arable land up here.
So that's what the monastic community takes on
and they use that as a bridgehead for expanding out on to the North York Moors there.
We look at this today and it a relatively tame arable landscape
that looks as though it's been like that forever.
But when the monastic community came here first of all,
they inherited something that was more akin to an island of arable in a sea of heather and moorland, really.
Quite unpromising land and it needed real vision
and real entrepreneurial spirit to actually make something productive out of that.
The Griff was the first of what became a network of grange sites.
As Rievaulx grew, it needed more food,
more support work, and inevitably more income.
By the 1300s, the abbey had 20 granges,
providing crops, fish, and vast numbers of sheep.
They were the engine room of Rievaulx's economy,
and as new benefactors continued to pledge land and resources,
the reach of the abbey spread far beyond the moors.
But from the very outset, the monks created a demand for wood.
And here in Ryedale, the steep valley sides have changed remarkably little.
So how could this woodland here be productive?
This is a piece of ground which is not much use for anything else.
It's making the best of a bad lot, in a way, putting woodland on it.
I say putting woodland on it - it's been wooded since the last Ice Age.
But throughout the medieval period and right up to today, as you can see,
it's been managed woodland, intensively managed.
For most of the medieval period and for quite a lot of the post-medieval period, it's been coppiced.
The trees have been cut right down to the base.
You get that crop of fresh new growth, which, after 20 years,
is perfect stuff for charcoal manufacture.
I never know how you know that something is an ancient forest or not?
Not necessarily by the trees that are here today.
We're surrounded by very modern larch and pine.
But very often by the species that are at ground level,
which rely on this injection of sunlight that they get through the process of coppicing.
This is a particularly good patch here.
We've got... these lovely little violets,
bluebells, primroses,
just up there we've got wood sorrel, and over there,
wild garlic, wood anemones.
So we've got the full range of species that really characterise
what is the best of our woodland flora.
'Whilst the demand for wood lasted centuries,
'the first decades of Rievaulx's life
'saw a demand for one special commodity -
'stone.
'Between 1132 and 1260,
'the abbey itself was built, re-built and regularly extended.
'And right here, in what is still called Quarry Bank Wood,
'the scars of the building work are very clear indeed.'
You can see some of the blocks of stuff they haven't used.
Yes, it's almost left in situ, as they stopped working.
These were some of the rocks that were left behind that weren't needed.
'Just a mile downstream from Rievaulx,
'the monks found a fine-grained limestone
'which became part of the abbey's refectory.'
We've seen a couple of others on the walk. Were they quarrying all along this face?
Yes, this outcrop of limestone comes along the edge of the escarpment
and there are other quarries in this area.
With a keen eye, you can spot Rievaulx's managed woodlands
and quarries all along Ryedale.
In 1145, Walter Espec was pleased enough with progress
to grant more lands further up the valley and into the moors.
But my walk now heads downhill, into Ryedale for the first time,
and towards the quiet, hidden focal point of Rievaulx's world.
This is my first proper view of Rievaulx Abbey.
I always think those extraordinary buildings and this setting
combine to make it one of the most evocative ruins in the whole of Europe.
This grand site owes much to Rievaulx's third abbot, Aelred.
A theologian of international repute, he presided over the abbey
for 20 years at the very end of the Norman period.
He was introduced to the area by none other than Walter Espec,
and was so impressed that he never returned to his native Northumberland.
By the end of the Norman age, Aelred had laid the framework
for this site's development
and had set Rievaulx up
as the biggest hub for commerce and community in the region.
It's an absolutely massive ruin, isn't it?
Was this the biggest abbey in north of England?
Well, getting on that way. Certainly,
it was the headquarters of the Cistercians in the north of England
and was the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England.
So, its size warrants its status in that way.
How many monks would there have been here?
At its height, there were 150 choir monks -
this is mid-13th century -
and upwards of 450 to 500 lay brothers looking after them,
so they were doing most of the manual work.
That's a big settlement. It is indeed.
So which parts are Norman? Principally the nave that we're in now.
If you turn round and look at the walls,
you can see we've got two sets of Romanesque Norman arches.
Then on top, where the stone changes colour,
that architecture is more or less 100 years later.
So those rounded ones are Norman? Absolutely. That's the Norman part of the abbey.
That's a key piece of general knowledge. Absolutely. Round ones are Norman.
Once you start to get more pointed, you're into Gothic.
This bit either side of us is Norman as well? This is more or less Aelred's church.
The rest of the architecture, going further, building higher and longer,
is about 100 years later. You're about 1220, finished by about 1260.
As the abbey starts making more money, it starts to build extensions. Absolutely.
You can build higher, nearer to God, and longer, because you can.
What are the monks up to during that golden age? Some are in here studying and praying,
others are out reclaiming land and farming?
Yes. Because they were a self-sufficient community,
the more land they got and the more the population grew here,
of course they needed more supplies to keep that community going.
But they were very quickly into trading in wool.
Wool was the principle economic measure at that time.
They were foremost, certainly in this country,
in formulating in the Middle Ages the wool industry in this country.
The farming implements all had to be made.
They were very much into iron smelting.
They were mining iron further up the valley and bringing it back here and smelting.
So there were furnaces here during the monks' time and continued well after the Dissolution.
So you think the legacy of the monks here continued well into modern history?
Absolutely. With the Dissolution,
the iron industry carried on for another 100 years,
because it was an important economic area
and it's as a result of the iron industry that we have the village now.
So what happened to the great founder, Walter Espec?
Well, it's interesting.
The reason for the founding of the abbey was that he'd lost his son in a riding accident
and so declared that God would be his heir to his lands.
He then ended up, in the last ten years of his life, coming back here as a monk.
So he gave up all the power and prestige? Absolutely. Really?
Absolutely. He entered as a novice and was accepted into the orders
and spent the last years of his life here, within the abbey that he'd helped to found.
He must have been seriously worried about his soul. Well, there's that about it.
Giving the land ensures you get through the pearly gates.
'The remarkable actions of Walter Espec show just what kind of people the Normans were -
'men of action and ambition.
'Perhaps his motive was no more than to gain his own entry into heaven.
'But the greatness of his institution is undeniable
'and the ruins still dominate this valley.
'The simple Cistercian aims of solitude and self-sufficiency
'attracted so much support that they would end up controlling the wool and mining industries,
'building lines of communications across the moors,
'and back to the trading hub of York.'
This sturdy Georgian bridge may only be just over a couple of hundred years old,
but it's replacing a Norman bridge which would have been doing exactly the same job,
and that is connecting the abbey there with all sorts of things like granges and wool houses,
quarries and ironworks further up the dale.
The Normans imposed an infrastructure here of bridges, roads and drainage ditches,
which ensured that the moors would never be the same again.
And the true extent of the Normans' legacy in the North
only becomes clear when you look at the range of other institutions they founded.
The monks of St Mary's were so impressed with the visiting Cistercians
that some quickly left to establish
their own Cistercian abbey at Fountains.
This site, and Rievaulx, would become medieval giants,
but would sit alongside Kirkstall and Roche,
Kirkham and Byland,
Whitby, Jervaulx, Selby,
and in the northwest,
Furness and St Bees.
In medieval England, only the King could match the monasteries for wealth and power -
a fact that Henry VIII would find intolerable.
But the Dissolution of the monasteries couldn't change the fact that for four centuries,
a nationwide network of Norman institutions had developed everything from faith to farming.
And here in remote Yorkshire, the Norman abbeys are celebrated more than anywhere.
Quarries, mining, woodland and ruins
are all part of the fabric of a National Park.
And to end my walk, I've climbed up here to Rievaulx Terrace,
which, 150 years after the Dissolution, became part of Duncombe Park.
Sir Charles Duncombe bought both the Helmsley Estates
and the Rievaulx Estates for the sum of £90,000.
The lands that Walter Espec had divided in 1132
were back together once again.
Ah, there we go. Lovely gap in the trees there.
You can see Rievaulx Abbey -
the grandest folly imaginable for the Duncombe family estate.
I find it hard to believe that Walter Espec,
the powerful Norman baron who helped found this monastery,
ended up swapping his castle and his lands
to end his days as a monk down there.
It seems hard to imagine with our 21st-century sensibilities.
In Yorkshire, we can see the Normans at their most barbaric.
But, as illustrated by Walter Espec,
also at their most devout and forward-thinking.
For me, Rievaulx really embodies all things Norman -
the love of ambitious building projects,
the obsession with power, wealth and Christianity.
Walter Espec died in 1154,
which was coincidentally the same year as the last Norman king, Stephen.
But by that time, this abbey and others like it,
were transforming this landscape totally.
They were ushering in a new era of prosperity and international trade and commerce,
and they were helping to cement this part of the country
into the new Anglo-Norman kingdom.
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