Historic Places in West Yorkshire

Kirkstall Abbey on the western edge of Leeds is one of the finest and most complete Cistercian abbey ruins in England, a twelfth-century monastery whose roofless but substantially intact church, cloister buildings and gatehouse survive in remarkable condition alongside the River Aire in a setting that preserves something of the rural character the monks sought when they chose this site in 1152. The abbey is managed by Leeds City Council and is freely accessible to the public, making it one of the most generously available medieval heritage sites in the north of England. The abbey was founded by monks from Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, the great Cistercian mother house, and the family connection is visible in the architecture, which follows the same austere Early English style that characterises Cistercian building across the north of England. The church, though roofless, retains its west front, nave, transepts and tower in a state of preservation that allows the quality and ambition of the original building to be read clearly. The cloister buildings to the south of the church, including the chapter house, refectory and warming house, provide an unusually complete picture of how the domestic arrangements of a Cistercian monastery were organised. The abbey's later history includes dissolution by Henry VIII in 1539, a period of use as a quarry for building stone, and a gradual transition from ruin to civic heritage site as the industrial city of Leeds grew up around it. The Abbey House Museum in the gatehouse provides interpretation of the abbey's history and the social history of the surrounding area, and the Kirkstall riverside walk connects the abbey with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the River Aire green corridor. The scale and completeness of Kirkstall, together with its free admission and urban accessibility, make it one of the most democratic heritage experiences in the north of England.

Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales is a ruined Augustinian priory of exceptional beauty set in a wooded valley of the River Wharfe, one of the most beautiful and most visited heritage landscapes in the north of England. The priory was established in 1154 and developed over the following centuries into a substantial monastic complex before its suppression by Henry VIII in 1539. The nave of the priory church survived the Dissolution and remains in use as the parish church of the local community, while the remaining conventual buildings are preserved as ruins within the parkland of the Devonshire estate. The setting of Bolton Abbey is the principal reason for its status as one of the great visitor attractions of the Dales. The River Wharfe curves through a wide wooded valley below the priory buildings, and the combination of the romantic ruined arches of the east end of the priory church, the sound of the river, the mature woodland of oak and beech on the valley sides and the open moorland visible above creates a landscape of which successive generations of British visitors, from the early Romantic tourists of the eighteenth century to the present day, have never tired. Turner, Landseer and Ruskin all painted or sketched at Bolton Abbey, and the combination of natural beauty and historical association that drew them continues to draw half a million visitors annually. The Strid, a dramatic natural feature a short walk upstream from the priory, is where the full volume of the Wharfe is compressed through a narrow gorge of water-smoothed limestone, the dark water churning through the rock channel with a force that is immediately and viscerally dangerous despite the apparent narrowness of the crossing. The Strid has claimed many lives over the centuries and its reputation for lethal deceptiveness is thoroughly deserved: the channel is far deeper than it appears and the walls beneath the surface are deeply undercut. The Bolton Abbey estate, owned by the Devonshire family since 1753, includes extensive walking trails, the Cavendish Pavilion restaurant and café, and the atmospheric single-carriage Embsay and Bolton Abbey steam railway.