Tintern in the Romantic Age

Richard Warner, antiquary, clergyman and author, was a protegeé of the influential William Gilpin. Warner produced a number of historical works that show his skill at synthesis rather than originality, as well as a novel with an antiquarian setting, Netley Abbey: A Gothic Story, published by the Minerva press. On August 14th, 1797 Warner, then a curate in Bath, embarked on a two-week tour that took him from the Georgian spa-town to Caernarvon and back. By his own calculation he had walked a total of 462 miles at the end of the month. Not surprisingly, he recommends pedestrianism as an “independent mode of traveling [that] enables him to catch beauties in his walk through an Alpine country, which the incumbrances of a carriage, and even the indulgence of a horse, prevents another traveller from enjoying.”

Warner begins his account of Tintern Abbey on Aug. 30th and concludes in an August 31st letter written from Chepstow. While his reaction to the ruin itself is conventionally enthusiastic—once he masters his irritability over the gate key being mislaid—his absorption with the industrial spectacle is striking. His description of a midnight scene at the iron forge might have fallen out of a painting by Josiah Wright of Derby. The “horrible employment” of the furnaces and the “solemn majesty” of the Abbey seem to shape his impressions of Tintern in equal measure.

A Walk Through Wales, in August 1797, shown here in a first edition, was republished at least twice by 1801. Its sequel, A Second Walk through Wales, by the Revd. Richard Warner, ... in August and September 1798 was published in 1799.

Simond's picturesque view, rendered in aquatint by I. Clark, includes several of the industrial features that would be visible along the banks of the River Wye. The cliffs resemble those near Symonds Yat above Monmouth or at Wintour's Leap down-river from Tintern, although the plate may be intended as a compilation of elements rather than a depiction of a specific spot. Nonplused cows in the foreground lead the eye toward a sloop off-loading goods onto a heavy cart, and across the river to a working water-mill. A hill in the background is topped by what appears to be a lime-kiln, its smoke rising to echo the diagonals of the surrounding mountain slopes. “Industry” occupies the center of the composition, framed by the natural scene but not disrupting or displacing it.

Simond did not visit the forges at Tintern, but later toured an iron and copper works near Swansea. He observed there that “the workmen looked very sickly” and he “found, on inquiry, their salary but little higher than that of common labourers.”

The Rev. Stebbing Shaw, historian and rector of Hartshorne, Derbyshire undertook a 1,070 mile circuit of the western counties of England and Wales in August 1788. As the distance covered in this period indicates, Shaw travelled mostly by carriage, although he took the recommended water passage from Ross down to Monmouth. (In 1788 this boat trip set him back one and a half guineas.) Shaw is largely focused upon antiquities and natural history; he promises readers—unconvincingly as it turns out—that his “unadorned narration of history” will be leavened by “digressions of fancy.” His descriptions are interspersed with references to fellow clergyman William Gilpin. Goodrich Castle viewed from the Wye, for instance, is now enshrined as “Gilpin's second landscape.” Observations on the River Wye, then in its second edition, has swept all before it.

Shaw disembarks at Monmouth and travels by land to Tintern: a mistake over the “hollow and uncouth tracks, seldom attempted by any carriage but those of the natives.” His route takes him first to the furnaces and forges above Tintern owned by the Duke of Beaufort and managed by David Tanner. He inspects the principal furnace, fed with imported ore from Lancashire, and the various forges for turning iron from the “broadest bars to the finest wires.” Although Tintern Abbey is the “venerable object of our deviation”, Shaw inspects and contextualizes the iron works with the same sustained seriousness that he does the Abbey.

A Tour to the West of England was well-regarded in the period, as suggested by its inclusion in William Mavor's six-volume travel anthology British Tourists. Charles Heath also includes an excerpt in his Historical and Descriptive Account of Tintern Abbey.

The Greenwoods produced large-scale maps of the counties between 1817 and 1830 to rival the publications of the Ordnance Survey office (see “Vagrant Dwellers”: Tours & Excursions Ordnance Survey “Old Series”, Sheet XXXV and Ordnance Survey “Old Series” Sheet No. XLIII).²⁷ Like the OS maps, the scale of this map is 1 inch per mile. Some historians feel that the Greenwood maps are superior to the OS maps in more clearly distinguishing county and parish boundaries.²⁸ Additionally, each map is embellished by a beautiful vignette of an important county monument or landmark: Hereford Cathedral for Gloucester, and Tintern Abbey for Monmouth. Both vignettes are engraved by R. Creighton. Hereford Cathedral, home of the Mappa Mundi, must be high on the list of treasures for any cartographer.

The two enlargements show the River Wye from the English or Gloucestershire side, taken from the present map, and from the Welsh side as reproduced from the map of Monmouth.