“Gleams of Past Existence”: Charles Heath's Guide to Tintern Abbey“GLEAMS OF PAST EXISTENCE”
Charles Heath's Guide to Tintern Abbey
Charles Heath, author, printer, and twice mayor of Monmouth, produced a number of topographical works about the county and its monuments. His interest in Tintern Abbey began in his late twenties when, trailing round with a family party touring Hagley Park, Worcestershire, the seat of Lord Lyttleton, he was much struck by a painting of the ruins.58 Like so many of his contemporaries, Heath’s engagement with Tintern Abbey began through a representation of the site. As he relates:
I soon availed myself of an opportunity of visiting the venerable Abbey, with which I had been before so much charmed at Hagley. In common with every other traveler I entered this venerable pile with a mingled portion of awe and admiration, - and not having before seen any monastic edifice... I fancied myself transported into the regions of ancient fable. I surveyed again and again every part of the fabric with the most insatiable curiosity; but not having read any part of its history, I wanted some intelligent guide to impart innumerable circumstances, which the contemplation of such a scene naturally excited in the mind of every curious and observant traveler. I returned to Ragland highly gratified in having accomplished my wishes, - but with ten-fold pleasure should have enjoyed the scene, had there then been such an account as this I have now collected.
In the spring of the 1791, a year after his first visit to Tintern, Heath established himself as a printer in Monmouth. His first publication on Ragland Castle (also owned by the Duke of Beaufort) was followed in 1792 by Descriptive Accounts of Tintern Abbey (later Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey), a volume that ran to 11 editions by 1828.59
Historical and Descriptive Accounts...of Tintern Abbey is engagingly opinionated and site-specific. While full of admonitions for visitors (see “Useful Information to Travelers”) it also, uniquely, communicates a sense of the village’s own relationship to the monument. The anecdotes supplied to Heath by 95-year old resident Christopher Llewellyn are particularly evocative. Llewellyn reminisces that “when he was a young man, the Abbey was the village Fives Court,—a game [similar to handball] much in vogue in this part of the kingdom,—and the body of the Church the place for playing Coits [similar to horseshoes]. Before it was removed to its new situation, the effigy of the knight was the placed across the nave, and that it served as a stop to the Coits when they pitched them”.
Heath's work is not just a field-guide, benefitting from considerable reconnaissance work by Heath himself (some measurements of the abbey’s dimensions are given in units of “my steppes or paces”), but a modest anthology of historical, narrative and poetical extracts. Sold by Gethen, steward of the Abbey, at the Beaufort Arms hotel in Tintern and at other county inns, the guide has a direct relationship to spectatorship at the site. Its successive editions span 36 years, providing a detailed and entertaining picture of the evolving tourist infrastructure of the region.
Works on Display:
- “Objects as they successively occur in the voyage from Monmouth to Tintern Abbey”
- “Names of the different Woods as they successively occur on the Banks of the Wye between Monmouth and Chepstow”
- “Moonlight”
- “Poetical Description of Tintern Abbey”
- Excerpt from “Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”
- Excerpt from“The English Garden: A Poem”
- “Original Sonnet Composed on Leaving Tintern Abbey”
- Ichnography of the Church of Tintern
- “Useful Information to Travellers”
- “The First Settlement of Tintern Abbey as a Wire Manufactory”
- “Settlement of Tintern as an Iron Manufactory”
- “Articles of Agreement, between Proprietors of the Wire Works and the Men in their Employ”
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Charles Heath “Objects as they successively occur in the voyage from Monmouth to Tintern Abbey.” Reproduced from Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803 |
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Charles Heath “Names of the different Woods as they successively occur on the Banks of the Wye between Monmouth and Chepstow.” Reproduced from Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803 |
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[Rev. Duncomb] Davis “Moonlight” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey by Charles Heath. Third edition Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803 |
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[Rev. Duncomb] Davis “Poetical Description of Tintern Abbey” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey by Charles Heath. Third edition Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803 Davis was rector of Whitechurch in Monmouth. Heath refers to him as a “native bard” and quotes his opinion on a sculpture in the Abbey identified as an effigy of Richard Strongbow. Davis’s “Poetical Description” was included in the 1793 Descriptive Account of Tintern Abbey, although Heath indicates that the piece was extracted from an earlier “Guide to Chepstow and Tintern Abbey by Water”. |
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John Cunningham. Excerpt from “Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”. Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Third edition. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. John Cunningham’s “Elegy on a Pile of Ruins” was first published as a pamphlet in 1761 and included in his 1766 collection Poems, Chiefly Pastoral. While not specifically about Tintern, two stanzas were folded into Francis Grose’s influential account of the abbey in Antiquities of England and Wales (1772-78), and later encorporated into Heath’s guide. Although Grose meant the citation as a critique on the artificial neatness of the Abbey’s interior, the “Elegy” excerpt effectively became part of the anthologized sentiment associated with Tintern. |
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William Mason. Excerpt from“The English Garden: A Poem.” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Third edition. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. |
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Rev. Luke Booker. “Original Sonnet Composed on Leaving Tintern Abbey”. Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Third edition. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. The Rev. Luke Booker, author and minister of St. Edmunds, Dudley, Worcestershire produced a well-regarded work on Dudley Castle (1825) and a quantity of less well-regarded verse.(One review of his 1791 volume Miscellaneous Poems begins marvelously: “to be pleased with no productions in literature, excepting with those of the first order, betrays a degree of fastidiousness, which, in a reader, is indiscreet...)41 Booker’s “Original Sonnet Composed on Leaving Tintern Abbey and Proceeding with a Party of Friends down the River Wye to Chepstow” was included in Heath’s guide, but does not appear in either of the poet’s published collections. In the 1803 edition of his guide Heath fittingly places this sonnet at the end. |
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Ichnography of the Church of Tintern Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Third edition. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. |
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“Useful Information to Travellers” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803 |
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“The First Settlement of Tintern Abbey as a Wire Manufactory” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. |
view related images |
“Settlement of Tintern as an Iron Manufactory.” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. |
view related images |
“Articles of Agreement, between Proprietors of the Wire Works and the Men in their Employ” Reproduced from Charles Heath: Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey. Monmouth: Charles Heath, 1803. |
