Watercolour of one of the most impressive and sad ruins in the Country.
 
Tintern Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery on the Welsh bank of the River Wye at Tintern, Monmouthshire, just by the border with Gloucestershire.
 
Founded on 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, lord of Chepstow, it was the first Cistercian house in Wales and the second in Britain.
The early community lived in relatively modest timber buildings, later replaced by a stone church and cloister ranges as the house prospered on endowments in Gwent and Gloucestershire.
From 1269, under powerful Marcher patrons such as Roger Bigod III, the monks rebuilt the abbey church on a grand scale, creating one of the masterpieces of British Gothic architecture.
Monastic life ended on 3 September 1536 when the abbey was surrendered in the first phase of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries; the community dispersed, valuables were removed, and the lead roof was stripped, beginning its slow decay into ruin.
It became an emblem of the Romantic taste for the sublime, inspiring painters and, most famously, William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), which reflects on memory, landscape and time rather than the building itself.
 
Interesting facts...
It's well worth a visit and even a drive past shows its impressive scale in a rural setting. If you do visit look for a rocky outcrop on the opposite side of the valley. It is known as the Devil’s Pulpit, where legend says the Devil once stood to preach to and tempt the monks below; the spot is still a slightly uncanny viewing platform over the ruins.