The monastery’s survival depended on the development of a sound economy to support the community’s needs. The Cistercians are typically regarded as great accumulators of land and able agriculturalists who were efficient if at times aggressive in exploiting their holdings. Even those who were critical of the Order’s practices acknowledged its effectiveness. The satirical account of the Cistercians by Walter Map (d. c. 1210) describes how they would secure a plot of valueless land from a rich donor ‘by much feigning of innocence and long importunity, putting in God at every other word’ and duly convert this into a productive unit:

The picture painted by Walter and other critics of the Order has coloured the historical reputation of the Cistercians as pioneers – somewhat ruthlessly – growing rich through acquisitiveness and the extension of cultivable land. Research suggests, however, that the situation was rather more complex. The early Cistercians may have transformed the landscape by bringing wasteland into cultivation, clearing forests and draining marshland; and likewise monks who acquired desolate border lands or expanded into northern England where areas were still barren after the ‘Harrying of the North’.