Rievaulx Abbey - Dissolution

Dissolution

See also: List of monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII of England

The abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538. At that time there were said to be 72 buildings occupied by an abbot and 21 monks, attended by 102 servants, with an income of £351 a year. It also had a prototype blast furnace at Laskill, producing cast iron as efficiently as a modern blast furnace; according to Gerry McDonnell (archeometallurgist of the University of Bradford), the closure of Rievaulx delayed the Industrial Revolution for two and a half centuries.

Henry ordered the buildings to be rendered uninhabitable and stripped of valuables such as lead. The abbey site was granted to the Earl of Rutland, one of Henry's advisers, until it passed to the Duncombe family.

In the 1750s Thomas Duncombe III beautified the estate by building the terrace with two Grecian-style temples; these temples, now called Rievaulx Terrace & Temples, are in the care of the National Trust. The ruins of the abbey are in the care of English Heritage.

When awarded a life peerage in 1983, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman, adopted the title Baron Wilson of Rievaulx.

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