My First Look at Bolton Abbey (Bolton Priory)

Following my journey from Warsaw, through Liverpool, Manchester, Burnley, and Skipton, plus a hearty nine-hour sleep, I took my first look at Bolton Abbey:

First, I had a look inside the chapel which Prior Moone had managed to save during the 1536-1541 Dissolution of the Monasteries period:

 A guide at the chapel told me that it now functioned as a High Church Anglican place of worship:

After a quick look inside and buying a book about the place for my wife, I went outside to explore the monastery remains:

Like all monastery remains in England, the ones at Bolton Abbey serve as a reminder of the country's once great Catholic past (Our Lady's Dowry):

Looking in different directions, I saw other old buildings which most probably had been connected to the Abbey in days gone by:

But still, it was the Abbey ruins which took central place:

 Especially with the River Wharfe in the background:

 

The place also held a Romantic fascination for me, as I felt myself following in the footsteps of Wordsworth's short book-length poem, The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), which deals with the 1569 Northern Catholic Revolt against Queen Elizabeth I.

 

The main text of The White Doe of Rylstone both starts and ends with the sentient white doe visiting Bolton Abbey graveyard to lie by the side of the grave of the tragic heroine of the poem, Emily Norton.

 

In the poem, Emily and Francis Norton are the two Protestant children of Francis Norton, a local Catholic nobleman who, with a group of his Catholic sons, goes to fight for the Northern Catholic Revolt, with them all being tragically executed (Francis is also murdered by Protestant forces, being accused of having become a 'traitor').

Yes, in the Bolton Abbey monastic ruins, I could sense the presence of the monks that had once inhabited the place, and the opening and ending scenes from Wordsworth's The White Doe of Rylstone.

 

Such places hold this magical metaphysical/cultural presence.

 

Wordsworth, of course, was fascinated by how modern-day people can sense the presence and culture of people who lived hundreds of years ago through visiting such places as Bolton Abbey (and other Catholic monastery remains dotted all over England).