Coverham: Abbey one Wray tried to destroy, and another restored

The plant fair on Sunday, August 8, provides a rare opportunity to see and even touch the history of Coverham Abbey, near Middleham.

The abbey was founded in 1190, and for centuries its canons quietly went about their business farming, cheesemaking, tending to local spiritual needs and helping the sick and the hungry, until Henry VIII’s reformation turfed them out and took away their land.

The seneschal – or steward – of the abbey who was in charge of dismantling it and ensuring the king got all the most prized possessions was Thomas Wray, whose family had been in Coverdale for generations.

His son, Christopher, was born in 1522, and he rose to become Lord Chief Justice and Speaker of the House of Commons. The place of Christopher’s birth is unknown, although it was somewhere in the Bedale parish, and his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography contains the enigmatic sentence: “The story that Wray was 'the natural son of Sir Christopher Wray, Vicar of Hornby, by a wench in a belfry' is clearly false.”

Sir Christopher Wray, who was born in Bedale parish and rose to become Speaker of the House of Commons

In troubled times, Christopher was a canny operator. Like many northern gentlemen, he was probably Catholic at heart, but, as Protestantism was pursued, he was officially recorded as being “indifferent” to religion. He tried the Catholic northern nobles who rise against Queen Elizabeth in 1569, executing some but engineering pardons for his brother and his nephew, and he was a member of the tribunal to which Mary, Queen of Scots, pleaded unsuccessfully for her life after she’d been found guilty of trying to depose Elizabeth.

Christopher cleverly kept close to Elizabeth, who knighted him in 1574 and gave him money to build a mansion in Lincolnshire as he toured East Anglia for her, prosecuting nonconformist puritans.

In such uncertain times, the old-religion abbey at Coverham was allowed to tumble down as locals made off with its useful bits of stone.

However, in 1670, there was a wray of light: George Wray of Middleham bought the ruin that his great-great-great-uncle Thomas had helped to create, and he built a comfortable home amid the tumbledown stonework.

A plant fair is being held in the historic grounds of Coverham Abbey near Middleham on Sunday, August 8

The abbey passed down the generations of George’s family until it found itself in the hands of banker Christopher Other, who, in the 1870s, contributed generously to the restoration of Coverham church which stands in a beautiful spot a field or so away from the abbey and is well worth a visit if you are attending the plant fair – its churchyard is said to be unique in that it falls away so steeply to the river that at its gateway you can neither see the church, because of the incline, nor hear its bells, because of the ripple of the Cover.

The architect who oversaw the 1870s restoration was Christopher George Wray, a direct descendant of both Thomas and George. He’d been born in Cleasby, to the south of Darlington, but moved into architecture while serving with the Bengal Fusiliers in India. He became an architect in the Public Works Department at Calcutta, and one of his biggest projects was building the Palace Hotel in Cairo in 1869.

In this country, he is best known for the offices of the Hull Dock Company, which are now a maritime museum.

He only designed one church – St Matthew’s in Leyburn, which was built in 1868 – although he oversaw the restoration of Holy Trinity Church in Coverham so close to the abbey which his relatives had both destroyed and salvaged.

Hull Maritime Museum was designed by Christopher George Wray, who also restored Coverham church where his family had lived for generations

Appropriately, the plant fair, which will be attended by many leading northern nurseries, is raising money for local charities, including the Coverdale Churches Trust. The fair runs from 11am to 4pm, with refreshments served in the barn all day. Admission is £5 cash (there’s no mobile signal in Coverham for modern payment machines). If you are using a satnav, try DL8 4RN.

AT the plant fair, Val Slater will be signing copies of her book, A Coverdale Clergyman, which tells of her ancestor the Reverend James Law, who was curate of Coverham from 1785 to 1831. All proceeds from the book will go to church funds.

Val, a family historian, is also a descendant of the Wray family although she says that “for obvious reasons I prefer to be associated with my direct ancestor George who bought the abbey in 1675 rather than my distant uncle Thomas who dismantled it in 1536!”.