Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal
The romantic ruin of Fountains Abbey set in the majestic 18th Century landscaped gardens of Studley Royal are a designated World Heritage Site and a most tranquil experience.
Situated in a secluded wooded valley in the Yorkshire Dales , Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal is the Stourhead of the north, or should it be that Stourhead is the Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal of the south? Both are beautifully set landscaped gardens utilising wonderful natural scenery and embellished with romantic water features, but unique to the gardens of the north are the wistful 12th Century ruins of Fountains Abbey.
Established in 1132, Fountains Abbey flourished, with a working mill, iron workings and even a fish farm and over the next 400 years the abbey became one of the richest in Europe. The Abbey complex included an infirmary, cellarium housing 200 lay brothers, guest-houses, graceful cloisters and the spectacular Chapel of Nine Alters with soaring arches and wonderful Perpendicular windows, the ruins of which remain today. Like many monasteries, Fountains Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII and in 1768 the ruins were bought by the Aislabie family who endeavoured to preserve the Abbey ruins as the crowning piece of their adjacent estate of Studley Royal.
John Aislabie, then Chancellor of the Exchequer had owned the Studley estate since 1716. After he retired in scandal over the collapse of the South Sea Company, Aislabie set his vast fortune into landscaping his estate as a fantastical escape from his demoralising fall from grace. The result is a remodelling of the Skell Valley into a canal like channel around which are features of classical architecture such as the Temple of Piety, the Rustic Bridge and Anne Boleyn’s Seat with excellent vistas of the Abbey, before the river discharges over a grand cascade.
Whatever the season, you could easily spend the day touring Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal as well as the fabulous Elizabethan manor house Fountains Hall, the Abbey Mill, which remained a working mill until 1927 and contains artefacts and exhibitions outlining 800 years of history at Fountains Abbey, the Deer Park spanning some 400 acres and St Mary’s Church, a Victorian Gothic masterpiece from the architect William Burges.
