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Romantic Kirkstall
During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the ruins of the abbey attracted the attention of a small number of historians and artists, but the growing Romantic Movement, with its great interest in picturesque antiquities, soon established Kirkstall as the most significant of all gothic ruins. From the seventeen forties the Abbey was painted by an impressive sequence of artists, such as Samuel Buck, Thomas Girtin, John Cotman, J. M. W. Turner, Abraham Pether, C. H. Schwanfelder, and Joseph Rhodes.
Poets and writers also found inspiration here, Horace Walpole, Thomas Gray and Robert Southey all relishing the prospect of 'the abbey, shattered by the encroachments of the ivy and surmounted by many a sturdy tree whose twisted roots break thro' the fret of the vaulting and hang streaming from the roofs. The gloom of these ancient cells, the shade and verdure of the landscape, the glittering and murmur of the stream, the lofty towers and long perspective of the Church in the midst of a clear, bright day' providing them with 'the truest subjects for their glass'.
Most visitors arrive at the car park adjacent to the Inner Gatehouse of the monastery which now forms part of the Abbey House Museum. The Inner Gatehouse is situated almost at the centre of the walled precinct of the abbey, an area which extended for some forty acres between the brow of the hill and the banks of the River Aire. The narrow road leading north westwards from the car park runs across the former dam for the abbey mill pond before proceeding out of the precinct by the Vesper Gate.
Crossing the modern main road, which was cut through the site in 1827, the visitor comes to the west door of the church. In the following guide to the abbey, each major feature is described in turn following a clockwise progression around the buildings.
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