Meaux Abbey. Gone but not forgotten

Preamble. This work was undertaken when trying to understand the draining of part of East Yorkshire following the last Ice Age.

In lieu of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, The Earl of Abermarle, William le Gros, Lord of Holderness, gave land for the establishment of a religious institution. Adam, a Cistercian Monk from Fountains Abbey, came to the area to select a site and chose the present one by sticking his staff in the ground and so Meaux Abbey was built there. This actually was to the chagrin of William le Gros who had other plans for this piece of his land and suggested Adam move his staff! However, Adam stuck to his decision and Melsa or Meaux Abbey was founded on the site we know. The spelling of Meaux has various forms but seems to have become fixed by the Norman Conquerors who named it after the town in France with the same name.

The abbey stood in 85 acres (34 ha) on raised land north of Wawne, in the flooded Hull Valley. This flooded valley was the remnant of the Humber Lake of 11,000 BC, formed at the end of the last Ice Age. The Hull Valley was a triangular area bounded between approximately Driffield, Hessle and nearly to Spurn. The water varied from a few inches to about six feet and also varied during the year. Running north/south there were areas of slightly higher land on which habitation developed eg Tickton, Wawne and Sutton. The southern part of the valley was salt marsh and tidal and the northern part, the carrs, was fresh water peat marsh land. Initially habitation of the carrs was not favoured perhaps because of variable water levels but also perhaps because of mosquito borne diseases. The flooded area round Meaux Abbey caused the monks of Meaux to dig dykes east and west across their dryer land to connect to the River Hull running north south on the west side of the abbey. On the east side there was the Lambwarth Stream a tributary of the Old Fleet. Remnants of the Old Fleet still exist and it can be seen to the east of King George Dock (OS Explorer Map 293). However, the activities of the monks, as explained further on, took water away from it so it became dry. The River Hull was the abbeys' main link to the Humber for trading purposes.

The Abbey church (1160), was originally made of wood sold to the monks from a motte and bailey castle near Birdsall in North Yorkshire but it was replaced by a stone church in 1207. This church was 80 metres long, had two isles, a north and south transept and central bell tower, originally with a single large bell. The stone was apparently from Brantingham and Hessle as the round the abbey there was no natural stone. The local clay was used for brick making and indeed Beverley and Hull were known as 'brick towns' because of the lack of stone and the prevalence of brick making. The church had a fine mosaic floor the tiles of which were made by the lay brothers and while many of these tiles are in the British Museum in London none seem to be in a Hull Museum, but I could be wrong! Besides the church the abbey had numerous other buildings many of which, with a little care, can be still identified by the 'humps' of the remains of walls.

Meaux was an important abbey in the north of England and at its height had 60 monks and 90 lay brothers. However, its administrative history seems not to have been plain sailing, some abbots being very holy but not good at finance and others the converse. There were several times when the monks had to be dispersed to other institutions when the abbey got into debt although these debts were not always the fault of the Abbot but on one occasion the monetary demands of the Richard III.. Litigation over land flooding because of the monks water channelling also cost the abbey money. However, when the abbey was closed in 1539 it did have a debt of £4,000 which was quite a substantial amount at that time.

I recently visited the Meaux Abbey site on three occasions with respectively Jan, Jayne and Gill, each visit unravelling the site further. These visits are part of other pages in this blog. I acknowledge their help and encouragement. None of the site is easy to navigate as there are plenty of ankle wrenching places and the site being humps, bumps and depressions is not easy to walk over. It's covered mainly by rough tall grass and nettles though on the higher places, representing walls the dryness, changes the flora. The track you come into the site on seems to be the original entrance (1150?) and originally had big gateway where the path turned east to the abbey. A second smaller (?) gate lay to the north of the Great Gate to stop the monastery chickens escaping when this main gate was open!

On the west side of the site is the Eschedike (1160-82) evidenced by a depression and row of trees. This dike runs the whole length of the site. To the west of this dyke is an area called the Outer Court. The Eschedike was 2 km long and was the first waterway constructed and joined the abbey to the River Hull via the Ashdike. On the current Ordinance Survey Map (293) the Ashdike falls well short of reaching the river but it must be remembered that in the 1100s this areas was under water so that at the south west end of the Ashdike access to the River Hull would have been across flooded land. Another prominent dike is the Monkdike (1210-20) and its branches. The Monkdike was 6 km long and 20ft wide and now has been incorporated, in part, into the Holderness Drain (1772) at the south end of the site. On the east side of the abbey site the Monkdike took water from the Lambwarth Stream and carried it westward through the abbey grounds to the Eschedike. The Lambwarth Stream was a feeder for the Old Fleet which ran south to the Humber but the further construction of the Forthdyke (16 ft wide) running south west from the Lambwarth to the River Hull took more water from the Lambwarth and this essentially 'dried' up the Old Fleet river.

Adjacent to the southern edge of the abbey buildings you come across an obvious long depression which is the remains of the Dogdike, a small off shoot of the Monkdike. This dyke lead to the side of the abbey and one could surmise that importing and exporting of goods were done along it as it actually went to the pursers office presumably allowing him to 'keep the books' in order. The Dogdike lead into a culvert which ran east underground perhaps leading to the Foss of the Abbots Chamber. Just south of this there is a deep excavation still containing water which has all the characteristics of a fish pond and seems to be fed from a Monkdike branch. There seem to be several fish ponds around the site and while they formed part of the monks and lay brothers diets the fish could have been sold live into the abbeys' hinterland.

A great deal is recognisable if you have the patience and stamina to look. For instance, standing on the south edge of the church platform you can clearly make out the cloister and the raised parts of the buildings beyond and beyond these the channel of the Dogdike. To the south west you can see the Eschdike and it's junction with the Monkdike. However, recognition of these from aerial photographs requires, as normal, good old 'ground truth', that is walking and looking!

The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539 saw the end of Meaux Abbey. In 1542 the abbey was dismantled and the stone used for Henry VIII's block houses, castle and joining walls on the east side of the River Hull. Twenty Masons and three hundred labourers were used for this. Plumbers melted down the roof lead on site casting lead ingots to be transported away. Although Meaux was a daughter abbey of Fountains which was also closed in 1539 the later was left with more stone than Meaux. One could surmise that Meaux was closer to Hull and there were dykes for the transport of stone which was not the case for Fountains Abbey

The extra Hull defences that Henry VIII built are testament to the strategic importance of the town with its vast stock of arms held at Suffolk Palace which stood approximately on the corner of what is now Lowgate and Alfred Gelder St. Indeed it was Charles 1's desire for this armoury, second only to that in London, that lead him a hundred years later, to Hull. His subsequent exclusion at the brick built Beverley Gate by Sir John Hotham provided one of the sparks for the first English Civil War 1642-1647.

So behind what we know as modern day Hull there is a complex tapestry of land and river use which actually goes back to the Iron Age --but that as they say that is 'another story'.

I acknowledge the help I have received from the Beaulah family for site access and to G H Beaulah (deceased) for his 1977 map of the site.