Postcard 22: Wordsworth at Tintern

Tintern Abbey on the River Wye

Chris Tally Evans has been presenting a four-part BBC Radio programme on the River Wye, called 'My Mile of the River'. This may be what sowed our seed of thought to revisit Tintern Abbey. We left the traffic on the M4 behind us, and drove on through beautiful countryside until we dropped down into the village. Wordsworth (1770-1850) was much on our minds, and his lines were ringing in my ears, as we enjoyed the 'wild green landscape' he described in Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (13 July 1798). The poem was penned on the poet's second visit to the site. He was in a buoyant frame of mind and was accompanied on this occasion by his beloved sister, Dorothy. Wordsworth's previous visit had not been under such auspicious circumstances. He had travelled alone some five years earlier in the summer of 1793, after the French had declared war on England, shortly after the death of Louis XIV on the guillotine. Wordsworth's daughter, Caroline, had been born to Annette Vallon in 1792: Wordsworth had returned home, leaving his daughter and her mother in France.

A few facts about Tintern

• 1536: the beginning of the dissolution of the monasteries.
• 1566: the iron industry began in the adjoining Angidy valley.
• 1782: the publication of Observations on the River Wye by William Gilpin.
• 1792-1798: Turner visited Tintern on a number of occasions.
  
• 1793: Wordsworth's first visit.
• 1794: Turner painted the ruined abbey in watercolour and Edward Dayes painted Tintern Abbey from across the Wye.
• 1796: Wordsworth left London with his copy of Gilpin's guidebook.
• 1798: Wordsworth's second visit
• 1798: Wordsworth wrote his Tintern poem.
  
• 1804: William Havell painted Tintern Abbey and the River Wye.
• 1815: William Havell's aquatint of Tintern Abbey.

• Stella and Rose's Books in Tintern
• Literary Trail: Tintern to Hay