Busman's holidays

Historians and archaeologists select the English Heritage property that would be their first choice for a day out

Charles Moore

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire

As I head north this summer, I mean to return to Rievaulx Abbey, the first Cistercian abbey in the North. Majestically, yet peacefully placed in Ryedale, it offers Shakespeare’s ‘bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang’. Rievaulx’s choirs have been bare and ruined since 1538, when Henry VIII dissolved the abbey.

So much has been written recently about British heritage in relation to slavery that we forget our great buildings’ much more direct involvement in atrocity—that committed by religious conflict. The great abbeys carefully built to inspire the contemplative life were closed and robbed. The whirligig of time has brought in its revenges, however: the ruins provoke contemplation in their own right.

I like English Heritage’s online guide—thorough, clear, well linked. St Aelred, abbot not long after Rievaulx’s foundation in the 12th century, was so remarkable, it says, that the community doubled to 650. My heart momentarily sank when it called him an ‘LGBTQ+ icon’, but, actually, it is interesting. It seems that Aelred was attracted to his own sex, but maintained chastity, offering spiritual love to all. As the guide rather sweetly puts it: ‘Aelred would doubtless have wished this topic to be discussed in a spirit of friendship.’ Amen.

The Lord Moore of Etchingham is the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher and a columnist for ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and ‘The Spectator’

Suzannah Lipscombe