Bolton Abbey
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.