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TTf HE following paper on " Monastic Buildings " was read at Tintern by Mr. 

 X Thomas Blashill, on the occasion of the visit of the above Club to 

 Tintern Abbey, August 21st. 



Tintern Abbey was a house of that branch of the Benedictine Order known 

 as Cistercians or White Monks. It was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, 

 who, becoming possessed of a vast extent of country, including Monmouthshire, 

 did like all the great nobles of his time, in settling a small part of his possessions 

 to religious uses. The Cistercian Order had only been established in 1098, and 

 confirmed by Pope Pascal in 1100. St. Bernard, to whom it owed its great cele- 

 brity, joined it in 1112 ; its first house in England was founded at Waverley in 

 1128 ; Tintern was therefore one of the first evidences of the jsower to which the 

 Order so suddenly attained. Of the monastic buildings then erected nothing 

 remains. Whether or not these monks suffered the vicissitudes common to the 

 earlier houses of their Order, we may be sure that rigid plainness characterize 

 their buildings, as voluntary austerity marked their life. 



The existing building owes its foundation to Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, 

 a descendant of this branch of the family of de Clare and owner of their lands, 

 who, in 1269, caused this work to be begun. The church was finished in 1288, and 

 it stood in its glory for two centuries and a half, till the dissolution of the mon- 

 astery in 1537. It thus became one of the later examples of the Cistercian build- 

 ings ; for long before the dissolution monasteries had ceased to be newlj' con- 

 structed, although in 1496, only 41 years before that catastrophe, the monks were 

 partially rebuilding their cloister and the quarters of the Prior. They were 

 thus but indifferent prophets of the future, and this last work, shows by its 

 magnificence that they were then but indifferently austere. 



But these buildings of 1269 were undertaken in what most persons will think 

 the happiest moment of the history of English architecture. It was the very 

 year in which the new choir and transepts of Westminster Abbey, built by 

 Henry III., were opened. It was just at the time when the graceful simplicity 

 of the Ladye Chapel of Hereford Cathedral had developed into the richer style — 

 especially as regards the windows — of the great north transept. The beauty of 

 the mouldings, the elegance of the outlines of the 13th century, are preserved ; 

 the purity of its carving not quite lost ; the glories of the 14th century tracery 

 are anticipated ; while there is a reserve of fancy, a grand uniformity which 

 hardly any other building of its age can rival. As to its character as a ruin (pity 



