Description
The core monastic complex at Fountains occupies an area of approximately two acres in the floor of the Skell valley. The site is sheltered from the north by cliffs and slopes up to 15m high, from which much of the building stone was quarried. The valley side to the south (Kitchen Bank) is gentler, but rises to greater heights than that to the north. The valley floor itself is only marginally wider than the abbey complex, which influenced the construction of the building.
The whole complex has been described and analyzed in extensio in a variety of sources, to which the reader is directed for a fuller description of the history of the monument and interpretation of the archaeological remains.
For the purposes of reporting the monument in this report, the cloistral complex can be said to be divisible into three major components:
a) The Abbey Church and Cloistral Buildings;
b) The Guest House Complex and
c) The Abbot's Lodging and Infirmary.
In many ways the subdivision is artificial, as is the allocation of separate numbers to the other abbey buildings, the divisions speaking more to their physical characteristics than any real division in their use.
The archaeological involvement of the National Trust on this site is limited, as it is the subject of a Guardianship Agreement with English Heritage.
Fountains was put on the original 1913 list of sites which should form part of a National Archaeological Collection, though WWI put the plans on ice. They were revised in the 1920s, which led to emergency repair works such as those on the south arcade wall of the abbey church. Little was then done until the 1960s and the "Robinson report"
Archives: This subject was discussed with Keith Emerick and Kate Wilson on 22.3.96. The early material connected with state conservation of the abbey resides in the archives at Fortress House (registry) or Keysign House (plan room), and possibly in the Public Records Office, who borrowed items at will - but there is no record of what went where, when. Fortress House certainly has works records from the 1920s onwards.
Robinson Report - 1960s: records kept at S.P.A.B. and in Alan Moody's papers, recently moved to EH regional office (Bettie Surtees House). Glyn Coppack may be holding other unpublished material.
1960s -
i) Roger Mercer, under the supervision of Roy Gilyard-Beer, conducted a number of small excavations as a new floodlighting scheme was installed. These trenches have not been written up or published, and there are concerns about the standard of work practised. Works drawings and notebooks known to exist.
ii) Hand drawn survey of the mill and surviving machinery made in 1965, now at Keysign House. Will be drawn into any future publication on the mill project.
1974/5 Coppack excavations at the Woolhouse/Bakehouse. Published. Excavation records with Glyn and at Helmsley store. 1980 Coppack excavation of the south transept. Published. Excavation records with Glyn, Keysign House and at Helmsley.
1986 Coppack excavation of south end of Cellarium. KE has copy of text of unpublished report. Site records with Glyn and at Helmsley.
1986 East Guest House excavation. Judith Roebuck has site records. Kate Wilson may be publishing this along with other work in the guest house area in due course.
1986 West Cloister Alley trial trench: Judith Roebuck has filed material. Archival material at Helmsley.
1988 Sacristy Passage: excavation extended into cloister by KE in 1989. To be written up by KE. Archive presently at Helmsley.
1994 Small excavations in the Infirmary, KW. Awaiting writing up.
Documentary Sources: There are an enormous number of textual and illustrative sources for the abbey, as the bibliography for this site will testify.
The Medieval records of the abbey and its business are discussed in the main report text, as are those of the lay ownership of the rest of the sixteenth century. This summary will simply deal with the evidence of "external" sources, commencing in the early 17th century.
The earliest document to mention the abbey is the "estate agent's blurb" concerning the sale of the Fountains Estate in c.1625 (Text 22) which - prophetically - identified what a pretty park the monastic precinct would make. Sale to the Messenger family followed in 1627 and included goods and chattels on the property. A list of these survives (Text 101) and includes in the Warm House (the abbey warming house?)
"1 long table 1 furnace and instruments for casting lead"
Although perhaps first established at the time of the Dissolution, the survival of this facility nearly 70 years later suggests industrial activity in the abbey ruins (perhaps taking advantage of the warming house chimney as a flue). It may also explain the coal deposits found by Walbran and the layers of pink sand excavated from his excavation spoil tips in the west Skell valley in 1991.
There are two further C17 accounts, both from antiquaries. Maramaduke Rawdon penned the first "tourist" account of the abbey after a visit to the ruins in 1664 (Text 40). He was particularly impressed with the cellarium, and noted in it
"a faire large round stone in which they did wash their glasses, canns and potts".
This was the stone trough now in the centre of the cloister. The Leeds antiquary Thoresby visited the site 18 years later, but made few specific comments except that the ruins were "full of trees in the very body of it" (Text 41).
The seventeenth century also saw the publication of the first illustrations. Greenhurst's 1600 map of the Lordship of Kirby Malzeard (Map 1) includes the earliest known illustration of the abbey. This was followed by two engravings; by Daniel King c.1655 (Ill.95) and William Lodge c.1689 (Ill.90). The latter may have visited the site with Thoresby.
A pairing of artist and antiquary also provided the next surviving documentary record. John Warburton (Text 11) took in the ruins on his visit to Studley in February 1720, in the company of the famous engraver Samuel Buck. Not only does Warburton's diary survive, but also Buck's sketch book (published in facsimile in 1979) containing sketches which he later worked into engravings for the Society of Antiquaries (Ills.65a-d, published 1722). Although these are a fine and largely accurate depiction of the abbey - the first produced - they do contain some errors which can be traced back to inaccuracies in the original sketches. They depict the abbey in a recognisable form, the most significant differences being the unexcavated areas, the surviving wall of the Lay Brother's Cloister and the tracery in the great east window of the church. Unfortunately all the views of the building are external.
Descriptions of the abbey become more frequent in the remaining years of the Messenger family's ownership. It is clear that despite the friction between the two landowning families there was fairly free access from the Studley gardens to the abbey. The Earl of Oxford visited in 1724 and was impressed with the abbey's completeness
"If that ruin may with any propriety be called complete which remains as yet in the least rubbish or confusion of any of those houses which have been at all demolished" (Text 3)
The ruins are also described at (woolly) length in the Aram poem of the late 1720s (Text 21). Philip Yorke's two descriptions provide the first comments on the keeping of the monument and the relationships between the Messengers and Aislabies. In 1744 he noted that the abbey was
"in the possession of a Roman Catholic gentleman who has refused very large offers from the late Mr. Aislabie"
By 1755 - when the Studley gardens were beginning to attract criticism for being too old fashioned -
"the ruins of Fountains Abbey deserve all that can be said of them, and pleased me upon a second view as they did at first. The ground on which they stand is most slovenly kept and would probably be more indebted to the taste of a heretic than they are to the zeal of the present Catholic owner, Mr. Messenger. The only proof which he gives of his regard to the sanctity of the place is the not permitting your chairs or horses to enter the first enclosure of the monastery" (Text 13)
Yorke's wife, Jemima, accompanied him on the second visit and made a lengthy description of the abbey of her own. She equally disapproved of the management of the ruins -
"but when he [Messenger] has made the entrance fast with locks and chains his respect seems to end there as he keeps every part of the ruin so shamefully ill it is with difficulty you can scramble about it and all the inner part of the church is full of rubbish and overgrown with weeds and nettles"
Despite these failings, the Messengers were undoubtedly instrumental in keeping the abbey from spoliation during their ownership. The seventeenth century antiquaries who were allowed to visit were followed by the great 18th century monastic scholar Dr.Burton, who published the first detailed plan of the abbey in his "Monasticon" in 1750 (Map 25). The Smith engraving of 1746 (Ill.64) also testifies to the degree of public access, as does the Wilson painting of c.1750 (Ill.97).
Once William Aislabie completed the purchase of the Fountains Estate in December 1767, matters were taken in hand. After landscaping works at the Fountains end of the Studley Gardens, the abbey itself was subject to his attentions. A variety of works were undertaken, including clearing much of the vegetation and levelling the rubble at least sufficient to form access ways.
The estate papers report that "rubbish" was being removed from the cloisters (cellarium) by February 1768 and elsewhere in the cloistral complex in May of that year. May 1768 also saw repair works to walls and the construction of a "garden room", although the nature and location of this building is not known. A dangerous arch was demolished in June 1769 -there is then a gap in the correspondence until early in 1771, by which time work had progressed on to levelling work in the "cloister" and the "addition to the cloister", and then clearing and levelling at the guesthouse. With the progress of the year - and warmer weather for setting lime mortar - work shifted on to stonework repairs in the cellarium and the church. The last relevant letter - of June 1773 - details planting of shrubs and flowers in the ruins.
The rather occasional glimpses from the estate papers, while leaving an impression of a much less vandalistic approach than William Aislabie is usually charged with, still fail to provide an overview of the scale of work and his overall intentions. To some degree this failing is met by Young's account, published in 1771 but probably written after a visit in 1768 -
"The rubbish is at present clearing away and all parts of it undergoing a search, that no pavements or other remains of it may continue hid. This work has, I apprehend, rendered it necessary to clear away all the rubbish from the court and lay out that space more regularly than would otherwise be done; this was the case with some of the apartments and likewise occasions the new fir doors in some of the old arches"
A further account of Aislabie's works is provided by Gilpin (1772, Text 61) albeit somewhat discoloured by his intense dislike of everything that he saw at Studley, and the way that the treatment of the abbey flew in the face of his own views on the proper role of ruins in a managed landscape -
"... his improvements have had no bounds. He has pared away all the bold roughness and freedom of the scene and given every part a trim polish...But not only the scenery was defaced and the outworks of the ruin torn away; the main body of the ruin itself is, at this very time, under the alarming hand of decoration .... when the present proprietor made his purchase, he found the whole mass of ruin... choaked with rubbish. His first work therefore was to clear and open ... to this business succeeded the great work of restoring and ornamenting. This required a very delicate touch. Among the ruins were found scraps of Gothic windows; small marble columns; tiles of different colours and a variety of ornamental fragments. These the proprietor has picked from the rubbish with great care and with infinite industry is now restoring to their old situation. But in vain; for the friability of the edges of each fracture makes any restoration of the parts an awkward patchwork... But the restoration of parts is not enough; ornaments must be added and such incongruous ornaments as disgraced the scene are disgracing the ruin. The monk's garden is turned into a trim parterre and planted with flowering shrubs; a view is opened to some ridiculous figure (I know not what, Anne Bolein I think they call it) that is placed in the valley and in the central part of the abbey church a circular pedestal is raised out of fragments of the old pavements on which is erected a mutilated heathen statue"
With the picturesque taste in landscape design coming into its own, Gilpin was not alone in heaping opprobrium on Aislabie's efforts. William Burgh (Text 19) visited Fountains in June 1773 and wrote to John Forster -
"he is exacting his brains here to destroy the venerableness of the finest ruins I have ever seen... he is taking away all the fine trees that surround it and planting shrubbery and flower plots....I am very glad to have seen these places before Ruin has proceeded to the utmost: a few years more will absolutely destroy them"
It was views such as these which have coloured - if not wholly moulded - the traditional view of William Aislabie's works at the abbey. Perhaps - the loss of some of the archaeological deposits of the Dissolution period notwithstanding - his efforts should be reassessed for what they were: a very early attempt at structural conservation and the presentation of a monument as much as a romantic ruin. (Note also the criticism of the absence of such management before the purchase). Structural losses only appear to include the cloister alley wall (marked on the 1750 plan), subdivisions of the cellarium and the boundary walls of the Lay Brother's cloister. Moreover, the worst excesses complained of by Gilpin do not appear to have been very long lived. The "fragment of a heathen statue" was probably one of the Arundel Marbles, other examples of which decorate the gardens at Hall Barn. (The Ministry of Works museum records of the 1960s include a fragment of the torso of a classical male figure, which may have been the offending item). It had been removed from the crossing by 1777 when Moses Griffith painted five watercolours of abbey interiors, the only illustrations known from the period when William Aislabie owned the abbey.
The Griffith watercolours show a well cared for monument, the most significant differences from today's appearance being the blocking of some now open arches, and higher ground levels where deposits of rubble remained unexcavated. The blocked arches included those of the Library Passage (shown open on the 1750 plan), the side arches of the Chapter House and the Parlour, all shown in the view of the south-east of the cloister (Ill.57d). This view also shows the planting in the cloister (which would appear to be anything but excessively formal) as well as the doors in the entrances to the Chapter House, Warming House and Refectory. The view of the crossing shows no sign of a podium, though a column in the western bay of the northern chancel arcade may be one of the Aislabie restorations. The current appearance of the High Altar certainly is, and may have been Gilpin's podium, albeit that it is rectangular and not round. The view of the refectory from the south-east shows several tall thin trees - suspiciously of the sort which C18 gardeners readily transplanted. Were the trees being removed in 1773 making room for these? Gilpin makes no comment on the Gazebo east of the High Altar, which was perhaps an addition dating to after his visit - contemporary with the remodelling of the landscape design?
However, it was Gilpin's opinion that prevailed in the accounts written by visitors in the decades after William Aislabie's death (see main report text).
The next event of note was the excavation of the Chapter House in 1790. This was carried out by the Head Gardener, Mr. Gordon, at the instigation of John Martin, a Ripon antiquarian, and which was first reported in Text 93 a few months later. (The circumstances of the excavation are reported in Farrer, 1806 (Text 64)). The purpose - successfully achieved - of the exercise was the discovery of the graves of the abbots, some of whose gravestones were left exposed along with the column bases of the Chapter House, decorated with fragments of the vaulting. According to Plumptre (Text 84) this involved the removal of six feet of rubble and also exposed the remains of tiled flooring. This was still visible though "too imperfect to deserve drawing" in 1805 (Fothergill, Text 62). Its demise was no doubt in part due to a practice admitted to by Douglas in 1812 -
"...but I was struck by the extreme beauty of the Chapter House (from the tessellated pavement of which, by the bye, I nefariously abstracted a loose brick)" (Text 86)
The spoil from the excavation of the Chapter House was dumped outside the building to the east (Text 91) - not in the cloister as was claimed in Coppack, 1993.
With the 19th century the number of visitors to the abbey drastically increased, no doubt encouraged by the publication of popular accounts of the building and its history. The earliest include Ely Hargove's "History of Knaresborough" (which first appeared in 1775, with new additions appearing frequently in the following years) and Grose's Antiquities, of 1785. There is a corresponding dramatic increase in the number of published views of the abbey. Dayes (Text 187) even assisted the enthusiastic artist and traveller, by suggesting the best colours of paint with which to commit the scene to paper. Presumably this was not advice needed (or followed) by J.M.W. Turner when he painted the abbey in 1797.
The abbey also still retained a practical function, the manorial court leet meeting in the Muniment Room annually, until its removal to Fountains Hall in the 1840s (Text 68).
The pine doors installed by Aislabie (but probably replacing Messenger predecessors) were not simply decorative but functional, serving to keep cattle - as well as visitors - out of the internal shrubberies. Fothergill was the first tourist to mention the doors being locked and having to obtain a key from the main gate at Studley. Although rarely mentioned, this restriction remained until the end of the 19th century - and resulted in Macquiod being locked in the ruins in 1894 (Text 38).
The condition of the ruins in the earlier 19th century is well recorded in the large series of sketches compiled by Buckler between 1816 and 1818 (Ills. 324-358) and shortly after in the published sets of views by Cuitt, Metcalf & Carmichael, and Storer, as well as a myriad of individual prints and drawings. William Aislabie's plantings were allowed to grow on after his death, perhaps to excess. Legge (Text 83) noted that they were "at present not being so well kept as in the time of Mr. Aislabie" and by 1806 Farrer's description read
"Entering the door [of the Chapel of the Nine Altars] instead of a chancel you find yourself in a grove; nature having sportively scattered through it an enchanting assemblage of shrubbery and trees. The sod too, through which they shoot, is exquisitely green..."
The vegetation was, however, periodically kept in check, particularly once Mrs. Lawrence inherited the estate in 1808. This was to be just the first manifestation of her care for the monument. In November 1822 part of the southern end of the Cellarium collapsed (Ill.257) (Fothergill had thought this likely to happen 17 years earlier because cows were allowed in and were presumably eroding around the column bases). Mrs. Lawrence immediately ordered rebuilding, to a standard that one visitor in 1828 commented
"part of it had lately fallen in but repaired in such a manner that I could scarcely discover it" (Text 103)
After restoration the roof above was bedded in clay, and then gravelled to form a "dry and commodious walk".
As well as publishing engravings of the abbey, Storer wrote an account of the ruins which - while recording many "standard" details - also included mention of two "mutilated figures, probably monumental" in the Parlour. These were perhaps the "heathen figure" removed before 1777 (and walled up in the Parlour?) and the statue of Anne Bulleyn - formerly in the gardens, and then in the abbey church by 1790 (Carter, Ill.341). Cuitt (Ill.60) showed the Chapter House arches reopened by 1822 - perhaps the same date at which the parlour was reopened. He also records that a figure of a tonsured monk, carrying a book, stood in the north part of the store to the south of the Parlour. The head of this figure may be that still on the estate today.
Mrs. Lawrence's repairs continued throughout her ownership; Walbran (1841, Text 33) records works to the church and sealing the cellarium roof in 1840 - the former work having given him the opportunity of digging in the rubble layers. Although the excavations were supposed to be for repair work, not archaeological research, they soon showed that many of the lower courses of the walls remained hidden. Enthusiasm fired a further trench exposing the grave of Abbot John of Ripon in the centre of the crossing. It was at this point that Mrs. Lawrence balked - and stopped the digging (but not before further excavations had been started in the cloisters outside the Chapter House and in the store to the south of the east cloister range).
Although Walbran pressed to be allowed to excavate further - and published a pamphlet to this effect in 1846 it was not until 1848 that his chance was to come. During repair work to the Infirmary arches (probably related to the improvements to de Grey Walk (30166)) tiled flooring was exposed and Earl de Grey agreed to support full scale excavations. These commenced in the Infirmary in 1848 and progressed to the abbot's house (1849-50), towards the refectory (1851), outside the "Lady Chapel" and south door (1852), the east side of the abbey (1853), the south side of the abbey (1854), outside the church (1855), the cloister, refectory and frater (1856) and to the west of the abbey (1857) (Text 82). These works (together with the cost of building the walk) were to cost the Earl Å“3409 in total, including setting up a museum in the Muniment Room (floored with tiles found during the excavations) in 1855. The programme of works may have included removing the Gazebo from the Chapel of the Nine Altars. It certainly involved the consolidation and presentation of the Infirmary/Abbot's Lodging complex; remains in the nave of the Church and reconstruction of the Galilee Porch (as part of which a toppled statue of the Madonna and Child found in the rubble was returned to the niche above the west door on the 27th June 1859 (Text 170)).
The Earl's work certainly included moving the large stone basin from the Cellarium to its present location in the centre of the cloister in June 1859 (Text 152). It was claimed that it had been moved away from that spot by the Messengers - the stone plinth having first been relocated by the 1840 excavation.
The de Mowbray effigy was amongst the objects on display in the museum, having been moved there on 16th August 1858. It was first recorded, closer to its original location in the choir, by Fothergill in 1805 - although it almost certainly came to light during the Aislabie clearances, at the latest. It is said to have been broken by some drunken soldiers, on account of which the military were barred from the ruins. By 1818 (Text 64) it had been moved to under Huby's Tower (the same year in which it was meticulously drawn by Buckler) and by 1830 to the north transept chapel (Text 42).
Walbran also discusses (Text 170, 1876) the discovery of nearly 400 burials in the Library Passage. These were later attributed to an "unknown Civil War engagement" - an exceptionally unlikely explanation for a variety of reasons (explored in the main report text). It is notable that the passage was not sealed on the 1750 plan of the abbey; it seems much more likely that these were skeletons recovered either from the monk's cemetery or elsewhere in the abbey and reinterred by Aislabie. Hence the sealing of the Passage by 1777. The bones were reinterred again by Walbran, in a mass grave in the nave of the church, opposite the Lay Brother's Night Stair.
The excavations inside the church exposed several graves, processional markers in the nave and the substructure of the choir. The latter included ceramic jars, which excited several learned articles on their possible function. All these features were to remain exposed into the present century, but have now been reburied.
Further, little known excavations seem to have taken place in the 1870s and 1880s (Text 78), possibly as part of the long term researches undertaken by Reeve and St.John-Hope - the results of which were published in 1894 (the magnificent Reeve elevations of the abbey, recorded stone-by-stone) and 1900 (the seminal article on Fountains Abbey in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal).
The ever growing number of visitors demanded the maintenance of high standards of ground-keeping. By the turn of the century the majority of trees (apart from a Cedar of Lebanon in the cloister) had been removed from the interior of the site, along with much of the ivy cover. By this time the disapproval of neatness of former times had given way to admiration for the management of the site -
"the admirable order in which the floors and walks are kept renders the inspection of the building easier and more enjoyable" (Parker, Text 23)
The museum was still sited in the Muniment Room in 1903, but had been removed to Fountains Hall not long afterwards.
The site was Scheduled in 1915, as part of an early National Monuments scheme, interrupted by WWI, though public money funded consolidation works after the war. Further investment was made by the Vyner family, including works undertaken by the Fountains Settlers Society. A major event of their period of ownership was the rededication of the abbey in 1932 (attended by the then Duke and Duchess of York) which was also the occasion on which the first floodlighting scheme was installed.
After the Second World War, Commander Vyner entertained a scheme to re-establish a monastic community on the site, as a memorial to the Catholic war dead. Not only was it difficult to raise the finance for this, but even the idea provoked a strong Protestant reaction. A 10000 signature petition of protest was delivered to Downing Street and even the National Trust's support was sought - the first recorded involvement of the NT with the estate.
Additional Sources: The MN postcard collection contains a large number of views of the abbey. Lack of available time - and worries about the vastly increased size of the already large bibliographic listing - have precluded the formal listing of these images, except where other features are also depicted. Archaeological Comments - Site:30432*0 Monitoring in detail is not required as the structure is the subject of a guardianship agreement with English Heritage.