Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey is one of the largest and best preserved ruined Cistercian monasteries in England. It is located approximately 3 miles (5 kilometres) south-west of Ripon in North Yorkshire, near to the village of Aldfield . Founded in 1132, the abbey operated for 407 years becoming one of the wealthiest monasteries in England until its dissolution in 1539 under the order of Henry VIII.

The abbey is a Grade I listed building owned by the National Trust and part of the designated Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The abbey was founded in 1132 by a group of monks who’d been expelled from the Benedictines. (Rioting, rowdiness, just the usual.) They were allowed however to affiliate with the Cistercians, and their abbey took shape in the following decades, in Cistercian Norman style. Its fortunes fell, rose and fell again over the centuries until Henry VIII dissolved all the monasteries in 1539. The land came into the hands of the Mallory and Aislabie families, and John Aislabie began beautifying the area with a landscaped water garden. He certainly had the time, it’s amazing he still had the money, having being expelled from Parliament in 1720 for near-bankrupting the nation through the disastrous “South Sea Bubble” (just the usual for a Chancellor of the Exchequer). Apart from the water garden, he and his family renovated Studley Royal Hall and added Fountains Hall (neither can be visited) and a deer park. St Mary’s Church was erected in the grounds in the 19th C, paid for with the unspent ransom for Frederick Grantham Vyner, murdered in 1870 by Greek bandits before they could collect. The Choristers House is a charming Victorian Gothic creation within the grounds. Formerly a music school, nowadays it’s let by the National Trust as a holiday cottage and isn’t open to the public. (Some cottage: five bedrooms, sleeps ten.) Start by seeing the abbey itself, then move on through the gardens & grounds.