The Magic of Monmouthshire with Chris Barber

ONE of my favourite walks from Tintern is up to the Devil’s Pulpit on the other side of the Wye in Gloucestershire. It is an up and down walk, about three miles in total length and provides a fine view of Tintern Abbey.

Cross the Wye on the old railway bridge and then follow a path to the right, to shortly turn left up a steep incline which leads through the woods to the ‘Devil’s Pulpit’. This is a limestone pillar situated just below a section of Offa’s Dyke, a great earthwork built by King Offa of Mercia in the eighth century to mark the frontier between England and Wales.

There is a legend that the Devil used to stand on this pulpit to look down on Tintern Abbey and preach terrible things to the monks working in the adjoining fields. One day they invited him down to visit the Abbey, but as he entered the building they doused him with holy water, and he fled screaming down to Llandogo with his tail between his legs. He then jumped across the river, leaving his talon marks on a rock which according to the legend, can still be seen to this day.

Tintern Abbey has been called the most beautiful ruin in Britain and its setting is very special. When seen in the misty morning of a clear day with the leaves of the trees summer green or autumn gold, or when lit up by the light of a full moon, it is easy to see why this has been said. Legend tells us that the great abbey of Tintern had its beginnings when Walter de Clare murdered his wife Eva. He soon regretted this foul deed and was, haunted by her ghost as he lay uneasily in his bed at Chepstow Castle. So he decided that he had to do something to salve his troubled conscience. Confessing his sins to a priest, he was advised to become a Crusader in the Holy Land and if he survived, he was to spend all his wealth by building ‘a house to the Lord’.

He obeyed this instruction and when back in Britain he hoped to gain final absolution by building an Abbey in the Wye Valley at Tintern. He invited members of the Cistercian order, who had already established their first home in Wales at Neath Abbey, to help him in this task. They commenced work on the foundations of the building and it was dedicated it to St Mary the Virgin.

The first service was held there in 1131 and this was only the second establishment of the order in the entire country and the first in Wales. It was colonized by monks from the Norman abbey of L’Aumone in the diocese of Chartres, a daughter house of Citeaux. The original Cistercian community modelled on Christ and his Apostles, consisted of an Abbot and twelve monks. It also consisted of a contingent of lay brothers, who did manual work in the fields and managed the livestock.

In 1270, Walter de Clare’s descendant, Roger Bigod, the fifth Earl of Norfolk, and Lord of Chepstow Castle, set about making the abbey much bigger and more impressive. He must have employed the finest craftsmen in the land , forthere are few buildings that have such graceful stonework, exquisite decoration and a sense of lightness combined with enduring strength.

In 1287 the first mass was celebrated at the high altar and it must have been an impressive sight as the bishops, abbots and lesser clergy assembled in the presbytery beneath the great east window, which is sixty eight feet in height and one of the abbey’s finest features. It has a central mullion with a wheel window over it, and once contained stained glass showing the arms of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. The west window, although only forty two feet high, is also impressive, for most of its finely carved stone tracery is still in almost perfect condition.

The following persons are believed to be interred in the Abbey: Walter de Clare, the founder; Gilbert de Clare, his brother,; Isabella, daughter of Richard Strongbow and wife of William Marshall the elder; Anselm Mortimer, Dean of Salisbury; and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who was beheaded at Banbury, on 27 July, 1469. The dissolution of the Monasteries took place in 1536, but Tintern Abbey survived for another year, and it was then granted by King Henry VIII to Henry , Earl of Worcester the direct ancestor of the Dukes of Beaufort who owned it until 1901 when it was purchased by the Crown.

When the ruins were cleared out in 1756, the effigy of a knight in full armour, bearing a shield and with crossed legs, was discovered. It was believed to be the effigy of Strongbow, first Earl of Pembroke, but more probably that of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and founder of the Abbey. A mutilated figure of the Virgin Mary and a sculpted head of a monk were found at the same time. In 1887, more than a thousand people attended the first service held there for three hundred and fifty years.

It was arranged as a thanks giving for the 600th anniversary of the church and the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Tintern Abbey was once the wealthiest medieval monastery in Wales and it remains the best preserved.. Its main attraction must always be the view of it as a whole, for although one hundred and fifty years was spent in its building, no part seems out of place or divorced from any other by style and period, and everything appears to combine in magnificent harmony.

The main road down to Chepstow was not built until the 1820s and most people travelled here by river. Those travelling to Monmouth used the road along the ridge above Tintern via Devauden and Trellech. From that road there was a route descending to Tintern on the old coach road which emerges behind the Beaufort Hotel . A ferry situated beside the Anchor Inn was established in the 13th century and it enabled people to cross to the English bank of the river. The archway beside the Anchor Inn opened onto a stone paved slipway leading down to the water’s edge, but it is now covered over. and ceased to operate soon after the First World War.