A team from Bradford University is conducting the first archaeological dig at Rievaulx for over eighty years. The team is excavating the refectory to find remains of charcoal which, it is thought, was stored here to supply the blast furnace that was built here following the dissolution of the abbey. The team believes that the sixteenth-century monks of Rievaulx were at the forefront of the metal industry and on the eve of the Dissolution were on the verge of developing blast-furnace technology. Their progress, however, was terminated by the dissolution of the abbey in December 1538, but a blast furnace was built on the site 1570-c. 1650.

http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/rievaulx/buildings/refectory/

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