 Hello, thank you for joining me. Today we're driving through the Staffordshire Countryside in search of a ruined Abbey. The ruined Abbey we're going to today is called Croxton Abbey. We're not far away now because our first landmark is the little church just here. This is the village of Croxton's church, so it's quite a bit newer than the Abbey. I don't know if we'll get a chance to have a look in there. I have been in there before but the Abbey is just around this corner. There we are, right in front of us. And what we're going to do, we're going to do something rather unusual. We're actually going to park right in the middle of the church because as you're going to see now the road goes through the church. So right now we are in the Abbey's church. I said I was going to park in the church, I'm actually going to park just here but we have just driven through the Abbey's church. I'm going to pull up here and we're going to go and have a look around the ruins. So here we are. So here we are. We've arrived in my larder at Croxton Abbey following us driving through the middle of the church which is really quite unusual. So here's the Abbey in front of us. It was founded in 1176 by some monks from Cotton, which you may know Cotton College. We have featured there in another video so we're now going to go in and have a look around. So the monks founded the Abbey in 1176. The church was finished in the 1200s and then we're just going to be closing the gate. It was dissolved in 1538 in the usual way of Henry VIII. And what happened was most of the Abbey became a farm but we're going to have a look around that part of the Abbey in a minute. Let's go and have a look at some of the lesser spectacular buildings, the lower ruins. I always think it's more fun to leave the church till last. So if we get down here, this piece of grass here was the infirmary. Now again it would have carried on beyond that hedge. The road has been put right through the middle. There's a good drawing here showing us how it possibly could have looked. So if you look there, that was the chapel. That's that room in front of us over there. So it looks quite different today. And that door there where there's a monk is over there. So we'll go through that in a second. Let's just walk. So now we're into the middle of the infirmary. So this is where the monks would have come had they had illnesses. Most of them would have gone back to the dormitories at night unless they were very ill. They probably would have slept in the infirmary room. So this is the infirmary chapel. Some monasteries like Tinton have an infirmary cloister as well. I don't think they did here. But this is, I find this quite interesting. These two bits of stone, these are the remains of a table where they'd have probably sat and ate. So we're going to go through here. That's that door I pointed out in the picture where there was a monk standing. It's what I enjoy doing when I come to this place, trying to imagine how it was. Now here you can see there's a bit of a watercourse. It appears to not be flowing. I'm going to jump across. I think up there it's possibly the watercourse from the latering. But we'll get onto that in a minute. We're going to now go down into the Abbot's Lodging. Because when I come to these places, I try not to just walk over any bit of wall. I do like to try and go through where a door would have been. So this is the Abbot's Lodging, the bin here. And so anyone who came to stay at the Abbot possibly would have stayed maybe upstairs above there. This would have been like the main hall of the Abbot's Lodging. And now I'm going to go around here and I'll show you where the latering was. It's quite interesting. This sort of barn they've built here, although it's all modern as opposed to it's not part of the historic Abbot. So it's got some interesting bits of artefacts and tells you quite a lot about them. See there's that watercourse again. I think the latering probably would have been here. So I'm going to do what I just did. I wasn't going to jump across for a wall. They were probably all sat in the road there on the toilet and it had gone straight down into the latering. Go through here now. We're making our way round to the church. What's left of it? It's quite impressive. Look ahead of us. You've got some quite high surviving ruins. You may have seen last time we did a video at a ruined abbey. It was Lesnar's Abbey, South London. I think any abbey is worth visiting, but all the walls were more like what you see over there, very low. You can see where the church would have been, but it wasn't the high standing ruins like this. Coming into this corridor. The abbey would have been full of corridors like this with similar sort of vaulted ceilings. And we come through here. This takes us out into the cloister. So this whole area here is the cloister. I'm just going to come down into this room. This would have been the refractory. And I think possibly the monks may have stayed above here because this is known as the South Range. But if you have a look here, I'm just doing what I don't like doing and just walk through a wall. There's a fireplace there. So that's probably where they'd have cooked the meals for the monks. Now, if we go over here, this may have been a door. We're now in the cloister. So you can imagine loads of sort of arches all round here. There'd have been a door out into the cloisters where the monks would have exercised. In fact, I think I can see just there. I can see a door where the monks would have exercised. So I've got someone stealing my car. No, I've got someone stealing my car, but it's another vehicle. This building here, these grand arches here, I'm going to stand back and let you have a good look at them. This is the chapter house. So it's nice that the front survived. So if we go in here, you can see the posts and there'd have been vaulted ceilings. So if you see what's behind me, if you imagine that, repeated all the way across here. And again, although that's another room that would have had a vaulted ceiling. So the chapter house isn't part of a church. It's where they'd have had meetings, discussed, you know, important goings on within the monastery life. So just as fascinating, sometimes you can only go to modern cathedrals today. You can quite often see chapter houses and sometimes they're oblong shaped like this one. And sometimes they are, they're either, I think usually hexagon or, I don't know if I've ever seen a round one. Go into this room here, tell us you hear it's a book room. So actually kept their books in here. Through here now, as I said about the road going through middle, we can go through here. We are now in the self-transit and there's some of the highest surviving parts of the ruins. The rest of the church is over the other side of the road. We'll do that in a minute. So here the road goes literally right through the middle. So if you think what we got here, there'd have been something similar just over there by that walnut tree. And then that would have been the main high altar, but we'll get onto that in a minute. So back, we can't walk round the church and one goes now. I've got to come back through the bookstore into the cloisters. We're going to go up these rival steep steps here and then we'll be into the main nave of the church. So up, up here, back to the road again. And here is some of the most impressive surviving masonry of Croxton Abbey. You can see what would have been the grand west front. So right now I'm walking right down on it and right in the middle of the nave of the church. So what we'll do, we shall, I'll just show you there's a board here. I think there's a picture of how it would have looked. So I'll give you an idea and then we'll go out the front door and you can see what's left of the west front. So if you have a look here, this is what it would have looked like. Or an impression, an artist impression of how it may have looked. Look at it today. It's quite nice how the trees are there. They kind of give, you know, a sense of grandeur. So now we're coming out the front door. So what happened after it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538? He had the roof taken off, but he didn't actually demolish the abbey. The site would have been sold and become a farm, as you see here. And they probably would have not for that farmhouse we see today. But some of the barns, they used the abbey as a bit of a quarry. They had taken masonry from it. It wasn't until 1936 it was finally realised they should preserve the abbey, which is great that they finally did. And just up there is the parish church. I don't think it's open, so I won't go up there. I have been in there in the past and I actually went there once. They were having a garden party because the Bishop of Litchfield was there. It was the church. I'm not sure which anniversary it was, but they said, oh yeah, come and join in. So they were very friendly bunch of people at that church. We're now going to go, I think this might be going through a window. I'm not sure we're going to go through into this room, which I'm not even sure if it is. There's nothing telling you what this room is. So if anyone knows, then please do comment and tell me. We're now going to go back through into the cloister. So we're now coming through back into the cloisters. We shall go around here and then we'll go across the road and we'll have a look on the other side of the road. So here's the tree grown just by the edge of where the church would have been. So there's the surviving South Transit. We're going to go back through to where we'd go. Let's go past the chapter house. We'll go through this, what would have been a corridor here. Back out the gate we came in and then we will go and have a look at the rest of the Abbey Church. So this is now the end of the chapter house. And here's the way we came in. So that's also that is like a modern barn. That's not historic, but in there there is some interesting artefacts about the Abbey itself. So I'll close this gate and now cross the road. And when you get into this end of the church you get to appreciate, you can see the whole church really. So that's quite, that's what I like about it. Now as a drawing here, again an artist's impression how it may have looked. So if you look there you can see what's left. So we've got some slightly higher surviving masonry. So there have been lots of little circular chapels which you can see. I'm going to have to walk through the wall again. So you can see one here, there, there and there. The high altar would have been in there somewhere. So see with the surviving masonry you sit, that would have been repeated all the way around with like a little vaulted ceiling above it. And even some possibly remains of coffins. They come, we're now in the middle of the church. You can see, you get the best views of all of the Abbey itself. So that would have probably been pretty much mirrored here in a north transept. And then that would have been looking down the nave. So it must have been an amazing place in its day. It's just as fascinating now to explore it in its ruin estate. Now I'll just walk through a wall again. There's a pheasant there. I'm going to go up here, I'm going to end the video here. Where we get a view over the whole of the Abbey. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you're ever driving through Staffordshire, then do stop and visit Croxton Abbey. Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video then please feel free to like and subscribe from Croxton Abbey. Goodbye.