Tintern Abbey - III

In our last installment on the Abbey, we say goodby to the interior spaces and head back outside.

Tintern Abbey - II

 

From Wikipedia,

Among subsequent visitors was Francis Grose, who included the Abbey in his Antiquities of England and Wales, begun in 1772 and supplemented with more illustrations from 1783. In his description he noted how the ruins were being tidied for the benefit of tourists: "The fragments of its once sculptured roof, and other remains of its fallen decorations, are piled up with more regularity than taste on each side of the grand aisle." ..... Grose further complained that the site was too well tended and lacked "that gloomy solemnity so essential to religious ruins".^[33]

We, among the current flood of modern-day tourists, find the "tidying-up" to be just right.

Tintern Abbey

Some may recall the name Tintern from the poem of Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798". Even with the poem to move us, the Abbey is an amazing place.