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The church
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The church stood at the heart of monastic life
and brought together communal worship, private prayer, ceremony
and ritual. It was the most visited of the buildings and structured
time and space within the monastery. The church at Kirkstall was
one of the first buildings constructed when Abbot
Alexander (1147-82) and his monks moved to Kirkstall from Barnoldswick
in 1152. Although work would have begun almost immediately, the
building was probably not completed until c. 1170, with furnishings,
such as the wooden choir stalls, added at a later date.
The structure
of the church underwent few alterations from its erection in
the twelfth century until the Dissolution. The main changes were
the insertion in the fifteenth century of a massive window in
the
east
end of the church, which stretched almost the entire width
of the wall, and the raising of the tower to belfry stage in the
early
sixteenth century. Like all Cistercian churches, that at Kirkstall
was dedicated to the Virgin
Mary.
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