The History of Fountains Abbey
The Foundation of a Cistercian House in the North of England
Mar 23, 2009
The monastery was part of the Cistercian Order and in common with other houses in the Order, was founded in a desolate but beautiful setting, with plenty of provision for farming, something which would later contribute to the monastery’s huge wealth.
The Foundation of Fountains Abbey
Fountains Abbey was created by a group of breakaway monks who left the Benedictine St Mary’s Abbey in York, with the aim of creating a stricter monastic community.
A group of thirteen monks arrived at the site, which was scrubland, in 1132. After clearing the land, they constructed a number of timber buildings, which were later replaced by stone structures. The site stands close to the banks of the River Skell and the river was to prove an important feature of the monastic community, providing power to the corn mill, allowing fleeces to be washed and the water was also used domestically for cooking and cleaning.
In 1135, the monks were admitted to the Cistercian Order and adopted the undyed wool habits worn by Cistercian monks.
Fountains Abbey and the Wool Trade
Much of Fountains Abbey’s wealth came from the wool trade, a trade at which the Cistercians excelled. Yorkshire’s moorland and soft water were perfect for sheep rearing and within a few years of the abbey’s foundation, lay brothers were trading wool within England and later overseas.
The monastery had a number of bases at English ports, including Grimsby, Boston and Scarborough, which allowed wool to be exported overseas to Italy and the Low Countries.
Lay Brothers at Fountains Abbey
Much of the abbey’s success came about because of the use of lay brothers, men who joined the abbey not as monks, but as manual labourers who took part in only some religious services each day. The rest of their time was spent in working on the monastery’s estates, and in cases where the estates were far removed from the abbey, the lay brothers lived in granges, returning to the abbey at regular intervals.
By the thirteenth century, Fountains was famed for its high quality wool and its estates stretched as far as the North East of England and the Lake District. Without the lay brothers, the monks would not have had time to pursue their lives of prayer and contemplation, but it was the lay brothers who laid the foundations for the monastery’s huge wealth, wealth which would be plundered at the Reformation.
Fountains Abbey at the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Marmaduke Bradley was the Fountains’s last abbot and was forced to retire on a pension of £100 a year in 1536 during the dissolution of the monasteries. The abbey, like so many other English religious houses, eventually fell into disrepair and was plundered for its stone for centuries.
Sources
Coppack, Glynn Fountains Abbey; The Cistercians in Northern England [History Press, 2003]
Lawrence CH Medieval Monasticism [Longman, 2000]
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