00:00Welcome to Kirkstall Abbey, one of the most best preserved Cistercian ruins of any abbey or monastery in the country.
00:08We are really lucky to have that here in Leeds.
00:11The monks came here and started to build in 1152, so we know that we are one of the oldest buildings, if not the oldest buildings, in the city of Leeds.
00:23The Cistercians came to Kirkstall because they wanted to be left alone. They'd had a previous settlement in Barnaldswick near Skipton and they really came into conflict with the local population.
00:34So they asked their benefactor, Henry de Lacey, for some land without people.
00:40Thirteen monks set off from Fountains Abbey, which is our mother house. Always thirteen monks, Jesus and twelve disciples.
00:46Behind me we have the chapter house, which is second only in importance to the church.
00:50It's built up of two parts, so the front of it would have been Norman architecture and the back is Gothic, which just shows how the Cistercian monks grew over time at Kirkstall.
01:00The chapter house was a really important place because it was where the monks went to read the rule of St Benedict every day and that taught them really their values for life.
01:09This is the abbey's church. This is the oldest part of the abbey ruins.
01:14When people are finding out about the monks, they want to know who these people were, why they came here, what was the reason for becoming a monk.
01:23And I think that's something that, particularly when I'm working with groups of children, when we talk about how strict their life was,
01:29that they came to church seven times a day, that they only ate once a day, that they had a strict vegetarian diet.
01:35And then the answer is, but why would anybody then want to do that?
01:40At the back of the chapter house, there are some coffins that are built into the walls.
01:44We don't really know why they are there.
01:46We think that they may have held remains of previous abbots, but over time, unfortunately, they got pillaged by people looking for treasure.
01:54Children are interested in where they went to the toilet and how much beer they were allowed to drink a day.
01:59So they went to the toilet in the Raridota, which is where our visitor centre and cafe is now.
02:05They drank a lot of beer because their toilets flushed into the river, which is where they got their water supply from.
02:10So they turned it into beer before they drank it.
02:13But they were allowed eight points a day.
02:15When the abbey was closed by King Henry VIII as part of the dissolution of the monasteries,
02:19it was the chapter house where the monks all gathered, basically, to give it back to King Henry,
02:24which would have been a really momentous occasion, incredibly sad and a massive turning point in English history.
02:31Henry's soldiers came, they took away the roof, they took away the windows,
02:34they took away anything that was seen to be of value, but the monks had hidden the books.
02:40So the books from the abbey, ten of them still exist today.
02:44We're just really proud to have it as part of Leeds' heritage and its culture.
02:48We are this little green beating heart in the middle of what is a really busy road and a really busy suburb.
02:54We know from people wandering around that it is just really special to them, both locally and internationally.
