2-982-611 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Waverley Abbey, Surrey - from a photograph by Mr. Liddiard, of Farnham, 1858. '...the ruins of Waverley Abbey...stand on a broad green meadow, round which the River Wey, overlooked by low wooded hills, winds on three sides...Waverley was the first house of the White Monks, the Cistercian "Grex albus," founded in England, and was established in 1128...There can be no doubt but that it was in turning over [the] pages of Gale's "Hist. Anglican Scriptores" that the graceful name of the abbey approved itself to the ear of Sir Walter Scott. Little did the good monk think, as he laboriously filled his sheet of parchment, what a "household word" Waverley was hereafter destined to become...Of the existing remains, the most perfect is a vaulted crypt...Adjoining is the east wall of an apartment with three good lancet windows, perhaps the refectory. Of the church nothing is traceable but portions of the walls...Oaks, thorns, and ivy overshadow and mingle with the ruins, which are so close to the river that we cannot wonder to find the annalist complaining of disastrous inundations and floods sweeping from time to time through the buildings, to the infinite loss and terror of the brethren'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.