The Rievaulx Abbey Chapter House

Abstract

The chapter house (figs, i, 2) is the most puzzling of the buildings that survive at Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire — the Cistercians's first foundation in the north of England. A reconstruction based on the ruined remains shows a two storey interior supported on cylindrical columns, lower flanking aisles, and an apsed termination with a hemicycle and surrounding ambulatory (figs. 3, 4). No other chapter house in England or France shares these features. As a consequence the building has been ignored in the literature for the most part, or drawn criticism on account of its divergence from Cistercian norms. Gardner (1976, 106 n. 103), for example, in his wide-ranging study of English chapter houses categorized it as ‘bizarre’ and Gilyard-Beer (1978, 34) judged it a ‘remarkable lapse’ from Cistercian austerity. Yet the building merits greater attention. It survives as the oldest example in England of a Cistercian chapter house, a building type which, except for the conventual church, ranked as the most important in the entire monastic complex. Moreover, the visible remains can be dated to the brilliant rule of Rievaulx's third abbot, Ælred (1146–67), the pre-eminent pastoral master and spiritual writer of the High Middle Ages in Britain, under whom the community grew to the largest in the country with 640 men. Ælred's role as patron raises important questions, therefore, about the building's sources and meaning.