Guidebook: Byland Abbey

The Abbey of Byland was regarded in its heyday as one of the three great monasteries of the north, alongside Rievaulx and Fountains. But its beginnings were unpromising: it was only after 43 years, and numerous moves from one unsuitable site to another, that the community of Byland found its permanent home. It started life across the Pennines as a monastery of the reforming order of Savigny, founded from Furness Abbey in Cumberland, and was absorbed into the larger Cistercian order in 1147.