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Open Country

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: Nuns of Yorkshire

Nuns of Yorkshire

28/03/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, Nuns of Yorkshire

Helen Mark visits the sisters of the environmentally-friendly Stanbrook Abbey in Yorkshire

Helen Mark meets the sisters (and sheep) of the environmentally-friendly Stanbrook Abbey in North Yorkshire. Surrounded by the springtime landscape, they reflect on new beginnings.

Solar panels and sheep may not be the first things that spring to mind when you think of a monastery but at Stanbrook Abbey you'll find these alongside a woodchip boiler and a roof covered in sedum grass to insulate the building and attract local wildlife.

The sisters at Stanbrook Abbey (and the sheep) live very much in harmony with their North Yorkshire Moors National Park surroundings. The community of sisters embraced their new, high tech, high spec, eco-friendly home after leaving their more traditional, gothic style 20-acre site in Worcestershire in 2009. Having lived there for 171 years, this was not an easy decision to make but the need to down-size and provide a more practical style of accommodation for the future lead them to this setting in Yorkshire, a place with a strong Cistercian heritage, where in their own words they '...seek to become 'lovers of the place', working in harmony with the National Park ethos to conserve and enhance the natural beauty and cultural heritage of this landscape'.

Helen Mark meets with the sisters of Stanbrook as they care for their livestock, explain the eco workings of Stanbrook, the joys of reflecting nature in art and the excitement of new beginnings.


Produced by Nicola Humphries.

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