•  Egglestone Abbey, North Riding

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In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Egglestone Abbey like this:

EGGLESTONE-ABBEY, or Athelstan-Abbey, a township in Startforth parish, N. R. Yorkshire; on the verge of the county, at the river Tees, 1½ mile SE of Barnard-Castle. Acres, 900. Pop., 59. Houses, 16. A Premonstratensian abbey here, on a gentle eminence, near the influx of "the fairy Thorsgill" to the Tees, was founded, in the latter part of the 12th century, by Conon, Earl of Richmond; took the alternative name of Athelstan abbey, probably from the tract around it having been given by Athelstan to the church; and was so much demolished, partly by ecclesiocasts at the Reformation, partly by being afterwards used for the construction of cottages, that the only remains of it now existing do little more than give a rough idea of its quondam largeness and beauty. ...

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Sir Walter Scott makes it the closing scene of his "Rokeby, " and says, - "The reverend pile lay wild and waste, Profaned, dishonour'd, and defaced:

Through storied lattices no more
In softened light the sunbeams pour,
Gilding the Gothic sculpture rich
Of shrine, and monument, and niche.
The civil fury of the time
Made sport of sacrilegious crime:
For dark fanaticism rent
Altar and screen and ornament,
And peasant hands the tombs o'erthrew
Of Bowes, of Rokeby, and Fitz-Hugh.

Egglestone Abbey through time

Egglestone Abbey is now part of Teesdale district. Click here for graphs and data of how Teesdale has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Egglestone Abbey itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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