Stop G: St Mary’s Abbey Ruins

About Stop G: St Mary’s Abbey Ruins

The spectacular ruins of St Mary’s Abbey – once the largest Benedictine monastery in the north of England – overlook the Museum Gardens.

Most of the ruins you see today are from the abbey’s church, which was rebuilt in the late 1200s. As you face the main wall of the ruins, you can look to the right and see clues as to how large the abbey church was: the remains of its pillars dot the park to your right, showing that the church once covered a vast area.

Many other monastic buildings once surrounded the church; traces of these are hidden beneath the gardens and the Yorkshire Museum.

The church was the focus for the community of around 50 monks at St Mary’s and also had around 200 lay people working for them.

All of this changed with the Dissolution of the Monasteries when the abbey was closed and gradually fell into ruin, as its stonework, glass and lead were taken for other buildings in York.