During our vacation to France in August we visited the amazing ruins of St Bertin Abbey, in the lovely town of St Omer, which lies in North East France.
St Omer is quite a quaint town to visit in general, with the Abbey located away from the town centre, but in quite a prominent position.
It was the vast size that amazed me. It was clearly huge, with very impressive masonry work throughout.
The pic above begins to give an idea of the size of just what is left. The position from which I took the pic above was actually within the old footprint of the building. For info, the crane in the background was not related to the ruins, and is where what looked like apartment buildings were being constructed next to the site.
My wife and I loved the ruins - they seemed rather romantic. Although our teenage daughter didnt even get out of the car to look at them ! I thought that was really funny !
The workmanship around the main entrance door is quite impressive, as is generally found in such large abbeys. Rather surprisingly the 5 statues you can see on the pedestals in the middle of the picture are all headless ! That seems a little odd - I wonder if there is any connection to the French Revolution for that action.
Wikipedia states that it was built in the 7th century (so 1300+ years old !), closing in the late 1700s during the French revolution. It was then largely pulled down in 1830, and further damaged during world war 2.
The pic above begins to give an indication of the original height. There is a stairwell to the left of the arched windows you can see - with arrow slits to let light in, roughly equating to a standard floor height each. 7 arrow slits are visible above the ground entrance door (ground floor) - so the main structure of what we can see was roughly a ground floor plus 7 storeys high - quite large. The central tower is now completely gone and I can only guess that it was even higher still !
In the pic above you can see some of the huge structural supporting pillars that would have supported the upper roof weight - again, they give an idea of size.
In the park, the footprint of the rest of the abbey was laid out via the raised beds that you can see above. It was quite a surprise to see that, as it showed just how huge it was - and it went way further across the park than I thought it would.
Even as a ruin it was very impressive to see - imagine what it must have been like in its glory !
The statue out front, which I assume to be a monk, has a very interesting name - Suger ! I'm guessing it was one of the more prominent monks from the abbey. 'Hey Suger' is not something I would expect to say to a monk !
The weather was stunning the day we were there, with the blue skies certainly acting as a lovely background for the pics !
The pic above is taken to the side of the main entrance door, and you can see just how thick that front wall is, although again, there is a spiral stairwell in it too - but it looks to be atleast 10-12 foot across !
I have to say that I was really impressed with the ruins - they were well worth going to see. They were fenced off, so you could not get right inside to see them, but they were still very impressive.
Definitely worth the visit if you ever get the chance, along with having a wander around St Omer town centre itself as well, which is quite pretty - and also has another stunning cathedral.
