Though some of the monasteries, like St. Alban's and St. Edmund's Bury, were in towns, there were others, especially those founded in these Norman times, far away from towns, in pathless woods or deep dales, like Rievaulx, in Yorkshire. Others, like Ramsey and Thorney, were in lonely fens and marshes. Here the monks themselves set to work, as in the earlier days, and tilled the ground, keeping up their regular services in their little churches most carefully—praying and working. Gradually their lands improved; other lands came to them; more labour was needed; and so, little by little, tenants took holdings on their lands, and farmed them for the "house", on much the same conditions as in the older manors.
Foundation of a Minster
From a thirteenth-century drawing in the British Museum.
We find that in many of the monasteries attention was given to other occupations besides agriculture. Some, especially those in towns, like St. Alban's, became in this period great seats of learning. All of them copied the books they used, and some of them were particularly famed for their writing and illuminating. In fact, they were the book-producers of the age, and very little of the work of learned ancient scholars could have come down to us had it not been for the careful, painstaking work of simple monks quite unknown to history.
Some of the abbeys in the west of England, like Bath Abbey, had a good deal to do with opening up the wool trade, which in the Middle Ages became the staple trade of the south and west of England. Flaxley Abbey, in Gloucestershire, developed iron-smelting. The iron mines in Furness were developed there by the monks, and also in the neighbouring Walney Isle, off the Lancashire coast. At Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, there were ironworks near the abbey, and at Malvern Priory there was ornamental tile-making carried on, specimens of the work done there remaining in a good many Worcestershire churches still. Monks gave great attention to their gardens, and were very clever in fish culture; and in many simple, homely ways they showed men how to develop the natural resources of the land.
In the monasteries men could quietly think and work, and use the talents they had, without being called away to fight or do the unskilled work of the world. In these early times there were no other places where men could lead quiet, thoughtful lives, and "think things out", and then put them into practice. The men in the monasteries were not all equally good or religious or clever, but the work done in and through these old institutions was most important and most valuable to the country.
