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00:00WALKING HERE THROUGH THE GROUNDS OF YORK MINSTER, I'M IN THE SHADOW OF THE CITY'S MOST FAMOUS LANDMARK.
00:16AND THE EARLIEST PART OF THE BUILDING, THE CRYPT, WAS BUILT BY THE NORMANS.
00:30ON MY WALK TODAY I'LL BE LOOKING AT HOW THE NORMANS TRANSFORMED YORK INTO THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS STRONGHOLD OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.
00:39IN THE COURSE OF A FASCINATING CENTURY THEY BROUGHT FIRST TERROR AND VIOLENCE TO THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY AND THEN LONG-TERM ECONOMIC PROSPERITY.
00:47AND THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM A LEGACY THAT ENJURED.
01:00IF YOU MENTION THE NORMANS TO ANY TRUE YORKSHIREMEN, YOU'LL PROBABLY GET AN EARFUL.
01:14THEY HAVE A LONG MEMORY IN THESE PARTS.
01:17AND WHAT THEY'RE REMEMBERING IN PARTICULAR IS THE SO-CALLED INFAMOUS HARRIING OF THE NORTH.
01:35IN THE LATE 1060s THERE WERE A SERIES OF UPRISINGS AGAINST NORMAN RULE.
01:40AND THESE WERE REPRESSED BY THE NORMANS WITH TERRIBLE CRUELTY.
01:44NEARLY EVERY SETTLEMENT BETWEEN YORK AND DURHAM WAS DESTROYED.
01:48THE VERY FIELDS WERE SOWED WITH SALT TO DESTROY AGRICULTURE.
01:52100,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED AND TENS OF THOUSANDS MORE DIED OF STARVATION.
01:57THERE WERE EVEN REPORTS OF PEOPLE RESORTING TO CANNIBALISM.
02:04THE HARRIING BROUGHT THE NORTH UNDER CONTROL IN THE MOST BRUTAL AND EFFECTIVE MANNER.
02:10AND IT MEANT THE NORMANS HAD ACHIEVED WHAT THE SAXONS NEVER QUITE MANAGED.
02:15FROM NOW ON, YORKSHIRE AND NORTHUMBERLAND WOULD BE PART OF A GENUINELY UNIFIED ENGLAND,
02:21WITH THE CITY OF YORK AS ITS REGIONAL CAPITAL.
02:24THERE'S SUCH AN INCREDIBLE LAYERING OF HISTORY HERE AT YORK.
02:30IT WAS THE STRONGHOLD FOR THE ROMANS IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY
02:33AND WAS VERY IMPORTANT UNDER THE SAXONS, VIKINGS AND, OF COURSE, THE NORMANS.
02:37AND IT WENT ON REALLY MATTERING.
02:39THESE EXTRAORDINARY WALLS WERE BUILT IN THE 14TH CENTURY,
02:42AND THE MINTER ITSELF WASN'T COMPLETED UNTIL 1472.
02:47THE GREAT WALLS AND MINTER ARE A SIGN OF YORK'S PROSPERITY RIGHT ACROSS THE MIDDLE AGES.
02:54THE CITY BENEFITED FROM A BOOM STARTED BY THE NORMANS.
02:58ON THIS WALK, I'M HOPING TO SEE HOW THE INVADERS NOT ONLY CONQUERED AND CONTROLLED THIS REGION,
03:03BUT INSPIRED FAITH, COMMERCE, EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY.
03:08THE FABRIC OF A NEW ERA FOR THE NORTH.
03:13FROM YORK, I'M GOING TO BE TRAVELING INTO RURAL PARTS DEVASTATED BY THE HARRIING OF THE NORTH.
03:19TODAY IT FORMS THE SOUTHERN EDGE OF THE NORTH YORK MOORES NATIONAL PARK.
03:24MY FIVE-MILE WALK WILL TAKE ME FROM HELMSLEY TO THE VILLAGE OF REVO,
03:29THROUGH AN AREA REIGNITED IN THE LATE NORMAN PERIOD, THROUGH THE ENTHUSIASTIC SPONSORSHIP OF RELIGION,
03:35IN PARTICULAR BY THE CREATION OF ONE OF OUR GREATEST ABBEYS.
03:40Today the Yorkshire countryside is littered with romantic ruins of medieval monasteries,
03:47but before I head out there I've come here to the edge of the medieval city of York
03:51to see where this link between York, the Normans and the monasteries really began.
03:56York Museum Gardens is where I've arranged to meet Professor Janet Burton,
04:01the country's foremost authority on the monasteries of Northern England.
04:07The gardens lie beside the Roman origins of the city, the Fort of Ibarachum.
04:14But I've come here to see a very different sort of landmark,
04:18established by our country's next great builders in stone.
04:2220 years after the massacre of the Harrying, William II, son of the Conqueror,
04:28granted this site to the Benedictines and started St Mary's Abbey.
04:33So is it unusual to have such a big monastery so close to the middle of town?
04:36No, it isn't really.
04:38In the 11th century, when St Mary's was founded, the late 11th century,
04:43it was really quite a normal thing to do to found a monastery,
04:46either within a city or on a site like this, just outside the walls of the city.
04:52How were they useful to the king?
04:54Why was it in his interest to have this vast abbey in the middle of York?
04:57Primarily, it was the prayers of the monks.
05:01It was the spiritual services.
05:03The king looked on monks as spiritual soldiers.
05:07But Abbot Stephen himself, the founder abbot,
05:11wrote a short narrative of the foundation of St Mary's.
05:14And he makes the specific point that William II was quite aware
05:19that York had been a troublesome place.
05:22So when this stone abbey started to rise up here in the late 11th century,
05:27within sight of the stone minster,
05:29you think of the stone castles that William I had built,
05:32these were all real symbols of royal authority.
05:35So what about the link between this abbey and perhaps the more famous abbeys
05:38to the north of here, where I'm heading next?
05:40Many Norman lords, this new aristocracy that settled after the conquest,
05:45they start patronising St Mary's. They grant lands.
05:49So in one way they're saying, you know, if this is the king's abbey,
05:52we want to show our support for the king by supporting his monastery.
05:58But then they go and do the same thing by founding their own monasteries.
06:02So they might build a castle, they build a castle, but they also found a monastery.
06:07They get the prayers of the monks, but they get a visible reminder of their power and their authority.
06:14What about the effect of these monasteries on the population in these parts?
06:18Are these sort of little nuclei of Normanness that are slowly making the country more Norman?
06:23I think they were, yes.
06:26I mean, William of Malmesbury, the Norman chronicler, comments on the coming of the Normans
06:32and how, I think he said, in every city and village you could see churches rise up in a style unknown before.
06:39I mean, they were building, they were building big.
06:41Sometimes we get mistaken impressions about monasteries such as St Mary's.
06:46They're thought of as being very inward-looking communities, oases.
06:51But for all that, monasteries did interact with the societies, the communities in which they were located
06:57through developing their estates, the production of manuscripts, through education.
07:03Often Benedictine abbeys run schools, St Mary's run one.
07:07Local people did comment on the importance, as they perceived it, of monastic houses as providers of education
07:15and hospitality and the provision of charity.
07:20St Mary's would play a role in York's development for 450 years.
07:26And in 1132, it played host to 12 monks, travelling from Clairvaux Abbey in north-east France.
07:34They represented a radical new group called the Cistercians, determined to live an austere, self-sufficient lifestyle
07:42in the true manner of St Benedict.
07:44They were travelling north, to the area of my walk today, destined to become the focus of a new community
07:52that would drive development in one of the remotest parts of the country.
07:56And they came at the invitation of the new Norman lord.
08:02The town of Helmsley, gateway to the vast expanse of the North York Moors.
08:07Wild country, which would have been even more wild back in the 11th century.
08:12Following the harrying of the Normans, the productivity and the population would have fallen dramatically.
08:18But now, the Normans were keen to change all this.
08:21In particular, a man called Walter Aspeck, who built Helmsley Castle.
08:27Fifty years after the harrying, Walter Aspeck was a rising star.
08:32He was the Justicia of the North.
08:34Effectively, the King's Chief Minister.
08:37He held lands across Yorkshire and Northumberland and would go on to lead forces against the Scots at the Battle of the Standard.
08:45But from 1120 onwards, this was Aspeck's main residence.
08:56Walter Aspeck was responsible for the building of this east tower.
08:59Well, in fact, the bottom two thirds of it.
09:01I love the way you can still see the original roof.
09:05It had been a wonderful home for him and his family.
09:08And the chroniclers tell us that he had a large library of books as well.
09:11So this was a scholar, a military man and very wealthy as well.
09:19It seems that the Eruditer Aspeck was a man of his time.
09:23And the late Norman period was the golden age for the foundation of monasteries.
09:29This was Aspeck's opportunity to seal his passage to heaven, enforce his political dominance
09:35and leave a positive legacy for this troubled region.
09:38My real interest today lies out there on the moors, and that's where I'll be walking.
09:44Because it was out there that Walter Aspeck gave huge tracts of his lands
09:49to that group of Cistercian monks that had been staying in St Mary's Abbey in York.
09:54And they would have found the first ever Cistercian monastery in the north of England.
09:59And that's where I'm heading.
10:01With Helmsley Castle, Walter Aspeck had created an awe-inspiring symbol of his power and control.
10:08His next task was to establish a great institution to drive Norman colonisation.
10:16But as my walk leaves the town, Aspeck's impact was more subtle.
10:19He was guardian of the massive areas of Royal Forest.
10:24Land which for the past three centuries has been the grounds of Duncombe Park.
10:28I'll be heading west, following the Rydale Valley upstream through Walter Aspeck's moorland estate
10:40and into the territory which he gifted the Cistercians.
10:43My destination is a small village, hidden at the bottom of Rydale and clustered around the ruins of Revo Abbey.
10:54One of Yorkshire's great monastic institutions and a legacy that would far outlast the Normans.
11:00Back at Helmsley, my walk starts in a legacy of a very different kind, the back garden of Walter Aspeck's castle.
11:15For the past three centuries, this cleared area has served as the parkland of Duncombe Park,
11:22one of the great country estates of Yorkshire.
11:24Duncombe Park was set up by the Duncombe family in the very early 1700s.
11:32Now they had made all their money in banking, they were new money.
11:36So in that way they're an interesting parallel to Walter Aspeck,
11:39who of course in the 11th century was also a new face, a man on the make.
11:47It's said that the Norman Lords created their own sporting venue right here,
11:50a clearing where moorland beasts were driven in and then hunted for the entertainment of guests watching from the castle.
11:59And to this day, you can still make out the faint ridge in the land that once enclosed the hunting area.
12:07Some of the Duncombe Oaks today could be as old as this medieval arena.
12:11This is exactly the kind of pile Walter Aspeck would have built for himself if he'd been around in the 18th century.
12:28Since 1700, Duncombe Park has sought to celebrate and indulge in the beauty of the local landscape.
12:34The Cistercians too reveled in the solitude ensured by the Norman forests and the remote Rydale Valley.
12:45But the monks couldn't succeed without bringing a degree of civilisation to the moors.
12:50Fantastic. This is my first view of this steep valley here called Rydale.
13:03And Revo Abbey lies at the bottom of that a few miles along here.
13:06And my walks are going to take me along the top of this escarpment.
13:10Beautiful views all the way I hope.
13:12But the first thing I'm going to have a look at is actually the first piece of abbey infrastructure that's been left behind.
13:16It's called, on the map here, the medieval village of Griff.
13:21And this was all part of the abbey's lands.
13:25In 1131, Walter Aspeck agreed to give away a thousand acres of his Yorkshire lands to the arriving Cistercians.
13:33This was but a small donation from the great Norman lord.
13:37But for the twelve pioneering monks, it was enough to establish their own abbey.
13:41And remain true to their ideal of self-sufficiency.
13:44On 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 Revo's first grant.
13:57So guys, on my ordnance survey map, this is a medieval village, is that true?
14:03Yes and no. I mean, Doomsday actually has reference to a ville, some sort of settlement on this location.
14:11We haven't produced any evidence of a settlement, have we really?
14:14We spent about six weeks up here a few years back really getting to grips with the earthworks, trying to understand what was going on.
14:19Any surprises?
14:21Um, once you look at the layout and start to understand how all the elements of this site relate to each other, you realise it's not a village, it's a single unit, it's a farmstead.
14:28I suppose the surprise being that we confirmed that it was a grange, not the deserted medieval village that we see mentioned on the maps, but certainly I think some of the more substantial buildings are a really good find.
14:38So it's a big prosperous farm then, is that what it is?
14:42That's exactly what it is, yes. It's a monastic farmstead, an outlying monastic farmstead called a grange.
14:48The building we're in is a barn, we think, from the plan of it and the size of it, and in Old French, grange means barn, so this is the barn at the heart of the grange.
15:00How contemporary is this to the founding of Revo Abbey?
15:02It was there absolutely at the beginning of the foundation, it was part of the original grant from Walter Speck, there was the grant of the abbey site, the grange land here.
15:11The initial grant was for about the equivalent of a thousand acres, it wasn't a contiguous area of a thousand acres, it would have been split between various parcels of land.
15:19The 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.
15:28This area is not a blank canvas when the Normans arrive, it's been used since pre-history. The name griff, which is given to this grange, is a Norse name.
15:41In other words, we've got a Viking community living here, who are farming a substantial area of land, arable land, up here.
15:48So that's what the monastic community takes on, and they use that as a bridgehead for expanding out onto the North York Moors there.
15:56I mean, we look at this today and it is a relatively tame arable landscape that looks as though it's been like that forever.
16:03But 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.
16:14Quite unpromising land and it needed real vision and real entrepreneurial spirit really to actually make something productive out of that.
16:22The griff was the first of what became a network of grange sites. As Revo grew, it needed more food, more support work and inevitably more income.
16:35By the 1300s, the abbey had 20 granges providing crops, fish and vast numbers of sheep.
16:44They were the engine room of Revo's economy, and as new benefactors continued to pledge land and resources, the reach of the abbey spread far beyond the moors.
16:55But from the very outset, the monks created a demand for wood, and here in Rydale, the steep valley sides have changed remarkably little.
17:06So how could this woodland here be productive?
17:10Well, I mean, this is a piece of ground which really isn't much use for anything else, so it's making the best of a bad lot in a way, putting woodland on it.
17:19I 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.
17:28And for most of the medieval period and quite a lot of the post-medieval period as well, it's been coppiced. In other words, the trees have been cut right down to the base.
17:37You get that crop of fresh new growth, which after 20 years is perfect stuff for charcoal manufacture.
17:42So I never know how you know that something's an ancient forest or not?
17:47Well, not necessarily by the trees that are here today. I mean, 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.
18:01This 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.
18:19So we've got the full range of species that really characterise what is the best of our woodland flora.
18:26Whilst the demand for wood lasted centuries, the first decades of Revo's life saw a demand for one special commodity, stone.
18:39And between 1132 and 1260, the abbey itself was built, rebuilt and regularly extended.
18:47And right here, in what is still called quarry bank wood, the scars of the building work are very clear indeed.
18:56You can see some of the big blocks, the stuff they haven't used.
18:59Yes, it's almost left in situ as they stopped working. These were some of the rocks that were left behind that weren't needed.
19:06Just a mile downstream from Revo, the monks found a fine grained limestone, which became part of the abbey's refectory.
19:14And we've seen a couple of others on the walk. Were they quarrying all along this face?
19:18Yes, this outcrop of limestone comes along the edge of this escarpment and indeed there are numerous other quarries along this area.
19:26With a keen eye, you can spot Revo's managed woodlands and quarries all along Rydale.
19:32In 1145, Walter Espec was pleased enough with progress to grant more lands further up the valley and into the moors.
19:43But my walk now heads downhill into Rydale for the first time and towards the quiet, hidden focal point of Revo's world.
19:52It's my first proper view of Revo 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.
20:12The grand site owes much to Revo's third abbot, Aylred. A theologian of international repute, he presided over the abbey for 20 years at the very end of the Norman period.
20:33He was introduced to the area by none other than Walter Espec and was so impressed that he never returned to his native Northumberland.
20:40By the end of the Norman age, Aylred had laid the framework for this site's development and had set Revo up as the biggest hub for commerce and community in the region.
20:52It's an absolutely massive ruin, isn't it? I mean, was this the biggest abbey in the north of England?
20:57Well, 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.
21:06So its size warrants its status, shall we say, in that way.
21:11And how many monks would there have been here?
21:14Well, at its height there were 150 choir monks, so 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.
21:26That's a big settlement, isn't it? It is indeed.
21:29So, which parts are Norman?
21:31Principally 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 archers.
21:41And then on top, where the stone changes colour, that architecture is more or less a hundred years later.
21:51So those rounded ones are Norman?
21:52That's it, absolutely. That's the Norman part of the abbey.
21:56That's a key piece of generalise.
21:58Absolutely. Get the round ones that are Norman, once you start to get more pointed, you're into Gothic.
22:03OK, so this bit either side of us is Norman as well?
22:06So this is more or less Alred's church, and then the rest of the architecture, the going further building higher and longer, is about a hundred years later.
22:15You're about 1220, finished by about 1260.
22:19So as the abbey starts making more money, it starts to build extensions?
22:22Absolutely, yes. You can build higher, nearer to God, and you can build longer because you can.
22:26And so what are the monks up to during that golden age? I mean, some of them are in here studying and praying, others are out reclaiming land and farming and things like that.
22:32Yes, I mean, because they were a self-sufficient community, the more land they got and the more the population grew here,
22:41of course they needed more supplies or whatever to keep that community going.
22:45But they were very quickly into trading in wool.
22:49Wool was the principal economic measure at that time, and they were foremost, certainly in this country, in formulating the Middle Ages, the wool industry in this country.
23:00The farming implements all had to be made, so they're very much into iron smelting.
23:07They were mining iron further up the valley, bringing it back here and smelting.
23:11So there were furnaces here during the monks' time and continued well after the dissolution.
23:17So you think the legacy of the monks here actually continued well into modern history?
23:21Absolutely, with the dissolution, the industry, the iron industry, carried on for another hundred years, because it was an important economic area.
23:31And it's as a result of the iron industry that we have the village now.
23:35So what happened to the great founder, Walter Speck?
23:37Well, 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 the heir to his lands.
23:50He then ended up, in the last ten years of his life, coming back here as a monk.
23:53So he gave up all the power and prestige for being a Norman note?
23:56Absolutely.
23:57Really?
23:58Absolutely, yes. So 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.
24:08He must have been seriously worried about his soul.
24:10Well, is that about it? Although, giving the land, of course, makes sure you get through the pearly gates, that's for sure.
24:14The remarkable actions of Walter Speck show just what kind of people the Norman Leet were, men of action and ambition.
24:26Perhaps 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.
24:38The 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.
24:56This sturdy Georgian bridge may be only just over a couple of hundred years old, but it's replacing a Norman bridge which would have been doing exactly the same job,
25:05and that is connecting the abbey there with all sorts of things like granges and wool houses, quarries and ironworks further up the dale.
25:14The Normans imposed an infrastructure here of bridges, roads and drainage ditches, which ensured that the moors would never be the same again.
25:25And the true extent of the Normans' legacy in the north only becomes clear when you look at the range of other institutions they founded.
25:32The monks of St Mary's were so impressed with the visiting Cistercians that some quickly left to establish their own Cistercian abbey at Fountains.
25:42This site and Revo would become medieval giants, but would sit alongside Kirkstall and Roche, Kirkham and Byland, Whitby, Gervo, Selby, and in the north-west, Furnace and St Bees.
26:00In medieval England, only the king could match the monasteries for wealth and power, a fact that Henry VIII would find intolerable.
26:12But 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.
26:22And here in remote Yorkshire, the Norman abbeys are celebrated more than anywhere.
26:29Quarries, mining, woodland and ruins are all part of the fabric of a national park.
26:34And to end my walk, I've climbed up here to Revo Terrace, which 150 years after the dissolution became part of Duncombe Park.
26:46Sir Charles Duncombe bought both the Helmsley Estates and the Revo Estates for the sum of £90,000.
26:57The lands that Walter Speck had divided in 1132 were back together once again.
27:03Ah, there we go. Lovely gap in the trees there.
27:06You can see Revo Abbey, the grandest folly imaginable for the Duncombe family estate.
27:19I find it hard to believe that Walter Speck, the powerful Norman baron who helped found this monastery,
27:25ended up swapping his castles and his lands to end his days as a monk down there.
27:31Seems hard to imagine with our 21st century sensibilities.
27:36In Yorkshire, we can see the Normans at their most barbaric.
27:39But, as illustrated by Walter Speck, also at their most devout and forward-thinking.
27:51For me, Revo really embodies all things Norman.
27:54The love of ambitious building projects and the obsession with power, wealth and Christianity.
28:01Walter Speck died in 1154, which was coincidentally the same year as the last Norman king, Stephen.
28:09But by that time, this abbey and others like it were transforming this landscape totally.
28:15They were ushering in a new era of prosperity and international trade and commerce.
28:19And they were helping to cement this part of the country into the new Anglo-Norman kingdom.
28:26So, let's go.
28:27Let's go.
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29:01You