We give below an engraving of the celebrated ruin of Tintern Abbey, estimated with its appendages one of the most beautiful and picturesque views in the kingdom. The chronicle of Tintern Abbey states that William Fitzosbert, Earl of Owe. in Normandy, was presented by the Conqueror with the manors of Tidenham and Woolastone for the maintenance of a garrison and forces to effect conquests over the Welsh. He left a son, Richard, who had the same privileges; and Richard had issue Walter. This Walter founded Tintern Abbey in the year 1131. Mr. Gilpin says, “Tintern Abbey occupies a gentle eminence in the middle of a circular valley beautifully screened on all sides by woody hills, through which the river Wye winds its course; and the hills closing on its entrance and on its exit leave no room for inclement blasts to enter. A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods and glades intermixed: the winding of the river; the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin contrasted with the objects of nature; and the elegant line formed by the summits of the hills which include the whole, make, altogether, a very enchanting piece of scenery.” The rule of the Cistercian monks, who were great agriculturists, was to choose sequestered spots of exquisite picturesque beauty. The resemblance between this church and that of Netley, of the same era, is very striking. The west window (shown below) has the mullions perfect, and most beautiful they are in pattern. The length of the church is 228 feet, and the breadth 150. When the door of the abbey is thrown open the sudden effect is astonishing. The grand background, seen through the east window, is truly sublime; ivy, especially on the right side of the nave, clusters in a manner which no scene of the kind ever surpassed, perhaps never equalled, and all this in a spot around which nature has spread an awful holiness. Such, even in ruin, is “holy” Tintern; what would it be if entire, and, as anciently, ” with storied windows richly dight”? The moon in a cloudless sky, shedding her beams through the tinted glass on the dim shrines and fugitive memorials of the dead, would form an imposing combination with the glimmering altars of the Deity. The whole would acquire a nameless character from the stillness of an hour broken only by the echoes of a solitary foot-fall or the melancholy cry of the birds of night.
“In such a place as this, at such an hour,
If aucht of ancestry can be believed,
Descending angels have conversed with man,
And told the secrets of the world unknown.”
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending October 15, 1842
