The Abbey of Saint Mary, York (after Miss Atkinson)
Louis Haghe (Tournai 1806 - London 1885)
Category
Art / Prints
Date
25 Jun 1831
Materials
paper
Measurements
325 x 370 mm
Place of origin
York
Order this imageCollection
Calke Abbey, Derbyshire
NT 286110
Summary
Print, lithograph (?), The Abbey of Saint Mary, York (after Miss Atkinson) by Louis Haghe (Tournai 1806 - London 1885). A 19th century India proof (lithograph?) Published June 25th 1831 in London and York, the scene shows a ruined building, one wall standing, surrounded by foliage, with a few figures in the foreground. The picture is dedicated to 'The Rt Hon. Lord Viscount Milton/President to the Rev. William Vernon Harcourt M.A.F.R.S. F.G.S.[and] C [and] C/vice president of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society... obedient servants/John + George Todd' (publishers). The abbey was once the richest in the north of England. Originally founded in 1055 and dedicated to Saint Olaf II of Norway. After the Norman Conquest the church came into the possession of the Anglo-Breton magnate SAlan Rufus who granted the lands to Abbot Stephen and a group of monks from Whitby. The abbey church was refounded in 1088 when King William II, Willliam Rufus, visited York in January or February of that year and gave the monks additional lands. The following year he laid the foundation stone of the new Norman church and the site was rededicated to the Virgin Mary. The monks moved to York from a site at Lastingham in Ryedale in the 1080s and are recorded there in the Domesday Book. In 1137 the abbey was badly damaged by a great fire.The surviving ruins date from a rebuilding programme begun in 1271 and finished by 1294.This the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England was also one of the largest landholders in Yorkshire, was worth over £2,000 a year, (equivalent to £1,210,000 in 2015) when it was valued in 1539, during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII; it was closed and subsequently substantially destroyed.
Marks and inscriptions
The Rt Hon. Lord Viscount Milton, President to the Rev. William Vernon Harcourt M.A.F.R.S. F.G.S. [and] C[and]C/vice president of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society...obedient servants John + George Todd. (printed under image)
Makers and roles
Louis Haghe (Tournai 1806 - London 1885), lithographer after Miss Atkinson, artist J. & G. Todd , engraver and publisher