Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley by Beausoleil Star this if you like it!

Rievaulx was a Cistercian abbey founded by St. Bernard of Clairvaux at Cîteaux near Dijon, France in 1098. It was to become one of the most remarkable European monastic reform movements of the 12th century placing an emphasis on a return to an austere life and the literal observance of the rules set out for monastic life by St. Benedict in the 6th century. The first buildings at Rievaulx were temporary wooden structures, but in the late 1130s Abbot William began the construction of stone buildings around the present cloister. The northern part of the west range which housed the abbey’s lay brothers still survives as does a fragment of the south range. There is also a small museum on the site.

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