Project

Although Selby Abbey is now a parish church, it was one of England’s great monastic churches, built on a grand scale and to a high level of architectural and artistic mastery. (...)

Although Selby Abbey is now a parish church, it was one of England’s great monastic churches, built on a grand scale and to a high level of architectural and artistic mastery. Founded in 1069 by William the Conqueror, three years after the Norman Conquest, and added to over time, it is a key building illustrating the transition from Romanesque, or Norman, to a fully developed Gothic style. It is also significant for surviving intact the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.

The painted and stained glass of the fourteenth-century east window illustrates the Tree of Jesse and is held in place by one of the best example of curvilinear tracery in Britain. There are also rare examples of fourteenth-century carved figures, which sit astride the parapets within and outside the choir. These important features have been affected by centuries of industrial activity as well as atmospheric salinity from the nearby North Sea, which has seen deterioration of the exterior stonework, highlighted by one of the pinnacles falling from the central tower onto the transept. Fire damage to the abbey in 1906 created long-term issues in some surviving stonework that has become problematic in recent years. Furthermore, as a parish church within a community badly affected most recently by the closure of the area’s coalfields, Selby Abbey lacks appropriate funds to for its restoration.