3-028-653 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Screen in Selby Church, 1870. '...a very fine specimen of a Norman abbey...There was a time, indeed, when its mitred Abbot passed in grand procession along its now gloomy and deserted nave, where, amid heaps of worn-out woodwork and lumber, lie the remains of the screen, which, at the time when the sketch was taken, spanned one of the northern arches, and now receives - like many noble things and men - only a posthumous illustration...[The] Abbey Church...seems out of all proportion to the size and importance of so small a town, and looks rather like the Minster of some provincial capital than the parish church of the few thousands who form the present population of Selby. It carries back the thoughts, however, to a time when even the numerous abbeys and religious houses whose ruins are still to be found in York and its neighbourhood were not looked upon as at all too many for the wants of the people. The convent and the monastery were considered amongst the necessities of life, in the days before poor laws were known...The Abbey of Selby was founded by William the Conqueror...It is in the Norman, the Early English, and the Decorated styles, with the exception of the central tower and mutilated south transept'. From "Illustrated London News, 1870.