Bed and breakfast availability
Tintern b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Tintern and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Tintern, Monmouthshire. Where the Wye widens in its lower reaches, 4 miles after leaving St Briavel's on the Gloucestershire side, there is a small village called Tintern Parva. Somewhat further, in a lie of green fields in the broad valley where the hills stand apart from it and the Wyndcliff height is 2½ miles away, Tintern Abbey stands at the point where the Wye ceases to be tidal and the sea itself withdraws. In 1131, Walter de Clare, the Marcher Lord of Chepstow, founded this abbey for the Cistercians, the monks of Citeau in France who took themselves into the wilds of a Wales that had to be secured and settled by the new Order. The church belonging to it, which has become its chief feature, was not consecrated till 1288 and is in the later style called Decorated. It has no roof now, and stands by itself among the meadows by the river. It is 228 ft long and 150 ft wide. Sacristy, chapter house, parlour still exist as reminders of the monks' sacred duties and the places where they met in community. Kitchen and dining-place, or refectory, also survive, and the quarters where the brothers who were laymen and not in orders could do the business the Abbey demanded. There is nothing but silence and green grass along the nave; but, in many ways, one of the architectural triumphs of Henry VIII was that he should by his Act for the Dissolution of the Monasteries have given to Tintern a state of ruin that makes its beauty all the more impressive because of its bareness. The tall grey walls seem to move upwards as you watch them, much as you get the impression, when looking at a tree growing in the silence of a woodland, that the stir of sap is singing through its trunk and the whole growth has a rhythmed energy. This is no fancy; the structure is remarkable for the artistry of its balance, and shows all the signs of that delicately managed capture of line which is the mark of great sculpture. As you move about the feet of the great arches and follow the lines of tracery in the East window, 64 ft high, you get the sense that the place was never meant to be roofed but always to reach the sky.

Nearby towns: Chepstow, Coleford, Lydney, Monmouth

Nearby villages: Alvington, Aust, Bream, Caerwent, Crick, Cwmcarvan, Dingestow, Elberton, Hewelsfield, Littleton-upon-Sever, Llandenny, Llandogo, Llandogo, Llangwm, Llanishen, Llansoy, Llanvaches, Llanvair Discoed, Mathern, Mitchel Troy, Newland, Oldbury-on-Severn, Parkend, Penrhos, Penyclawdd, Raglan, Saint Arvans, Sheperdine, Shirenewton, St. Briavels, Thornbury, Tidenham, Trellech, Whitecroft, Wolvesnewton, Wonastow, Woolaston

Have you decided to visit Tintern or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Tintern bed and breakfast (a Tintern B&B or Tintern b and b)
• a Tintern guesthouse
• a Tintern hotel (or motel)
• a Tintern self-catering establishment, or
• other Tintern accommodation