Medieval Building

In this project, we called on the expertise of modern-day builders to understand more about how the medieval St Mary’s Abbey was built.

The ruins of St Mary’s stand in the Museum Gardens outside the Yorkshire Museum.

The abbey, first built in 1088, was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England. The abbey walls, built in the 1260s, remain the most complete set of abbey walls in the country.

We approached builders from Shepherd Construction in York, who are more used to working on skyscrapers in nearby Leeds, than studying medieval ruins.

They looked at old documents relating to the building of the abbey and also agreed to try replica iron spades, created by York blacksmith Don Barker, based on spades from the museum’s collections.