Despoliation
The Roche Abbey records were lost or destroyed so there are no accounts of what went on in the abbey, other than there were 14 monks and an unknown number of novices at the time of dissolution in 1538. It was the dissolution by King Henry VIII of England that rendered the abbey to ruin, but the walls of the north and south transepts are still impressive. The local community at time of dissolution decided they had first right of claim on Roche Abbey and its possessions. A very detailed account exists citing the terrible destruction of the abbey and its valuable artefacts. Timber, lead and stone were also removed in vast quantities.
The remarkable chronicle of the despoliation was written by Michael Sherbrook, a priest and rector of nearby Wickersley who watched the pillaging. "For the church was the first thing that was spoiled; then the abbot’s lodging, the dormitory and refectory, with the cloister and all the buildings around, within the abbey walls," wrote Sherbrook in his eyewitness account. "For nothing was spared except the ox-houses and swinecoates and other such houses or offices that stood outside the walls – these had greater favour shown to them than the church itself."
"This was done on the instruction of Cromwell, as Fox reports in his Book of Acts and Monuments", wrote Sherbrook in his remarkable account. "It would have pitied any heart to see the tearing up of the lead, the plucking up of boards and throwing down of the rafters. And when the lead was torn off and cast down into the church and the tombs in the church were all broken (for in most abbeys various noblemen and women were buried, and in some kings, but their tombs were no more regarded than those of lesser persons, for to what end should they stand when the church over them was not spared for their cause) and all things of value were spoiled, plucked away or utterly defaced, those who cast the lead into fodders plucked up all the seats in the choir where the monks sat when they said service."
"These seats were like the seats in minsters; they were burned and the lead melted, although there was plenty of wood nearby, for the abbey stood among the woods and the rocks of stone," continued Sherbrook. "Pewter vessels were stolen away and hidden in the rocks, and it seemed that every person was intent upon filching and spoiling what he could. Even those who had been content to permit the monks’ worship and do great reverence at their matins, masses and services two days previously were no less happy to pilfer, which is strange, that they could one day think it to be the house of God and the next the house of the Devil – or else they would not have been so ready to have spoiled it."
Left in ruin, the land passed through many private hands until the 4th Earl of Scarbrough decided it needed revitalising to enhance his adjoining family seat at Sandbeck Park. Lord Scarborough enlisted the talents of Capability Brown. With an astonishing disregard for history, Brown demolished buildings, built large earth mounds and turfed the whole site. Until the end of the 19th century Roche Abbey remained buried beneath Brown's work and wooded parkland. But subsequent excavation in the 1920s returned Roche to its former splendour.
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