# Fountains Abbey

ruined Cistercian abbey in Yorkshire, England, UK

Lindrick with Studley Royal and Fountains, United Kingdom

Settlement · Sacred place. 1101 CE – 1539 CE

## Story

• Fountains Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery near Ripon in North Yorkshire, England, founded in 1132.
• It grew into one of the wealthiest monasteries in England, supported by wool, lead, cattle, horses and stone.
• After its dissolution in 1539, the abbey was stripped and later incorporated into the 18th-century Studley Royal landscape.
• The site is part of a World Heritage Site recognised in 1986, combining the abbey ruins with a water garden and deer park.
• Recent geophysical surveys have revealed a large monastic cemetery and an industrial-scale tannery.

## History

Fountains Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery in the valley of the River Skell near Ripon, North Yorkshire. It was founded in 1132 when thirteen monks, expelled after a dispute and riot at the Benedictine house of St Mary’s Abbey in York, were taken under the protection of Thurstan, archbishop of York. He gave them land in the enclosed valley, which provided shelter, stone, timber and running water; the six springs inspired the name Fountains. The community became subject to Clairvaux Abbey under St Bernard, and Geoffrey of Ainai taught the monks the seven canonical hours and how to construct wooden buildings in Cistercian practice.

After Henry Murdac was elected abbot in 1143, the small stone church and timber claustral buildings were replaced. The new church was similar in plan to the church at Vauclair Abbey that Murdac had previously commissioned, and within three years an aisled nave had been added and the first permanent claustral buildings, built in stone and roofed in tile, were completed. In 1146 an angry mob, annoyed at Murdac for opposing the election of William FitzHerbert as archbishop of York, attacked the abbey and burned all but the church and some surrounding buildings. The community recovered swiftly and founded four daughter houses.

Murdac resigned as abbot in 1147 upon becoming archbishop of York and was replaced first by Maurice, abbot of Rievaulx, then by Thorald, who was forced by Murdac to resign after two years.

The next abbot, Richard, restored stability and prosperity and supervised repairs to the damaged church and more accommodation for increasing recruits. At his death in 1170 the chapter house was complete and the new church almost finished, with Robert of Pipewell continuing the work. During the first half of the 13th century Fountains increased in reputation and prosperity under John of York, John of Hessle and John of Kent, who completed another expansion including enlarging the church and building an infirmary. Fountains rose to become the largest and richest abbey in the north of England.

The choir monks lived in the abbey and followed the rule of St Benedict in simplicity, solitude and austerity, while the lay brothers, who were not monks, provided labour so the monks could spend time in prayer and worship. The abbey became wealthy through wool production, lead mining, cattle rearing, horse breeding and stone quarrying.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the north of England, including Fountains, was subject to increased taxation. Archbishop John le Romeyn criticised the abbey’s dire material and physical state when he visited in 1294, and by the 1330s the abbey was no longer working to surplus but having to borrow money. By the second half of the 13th century the abbey was working in straitened circumstances under eleven abbots and became financially unstable largely because of forward selling its wool crop. The run of disasters continued into the early 14th century when northern England was invaded by the Scots and there were further demands for taxes, culminating in the Black Death of 1348–1349, whose loss of manpower and income was almost ruinous.

The Papal Schism of 1378–1409 led English Cistercian houses to break off contact with the mother house of Citeaux; the abbots formed their own chapter to rule the order in England and became increasingly involved in internecine politics.

After Abbot Burley died in 1410 the community was riven by several years of turmoil over the election until John Ripon was finally appointed in 1416 and ruled until his death in 1434. Fountains regained some stability and prosperity under John Greenwell (1442–1471), Thomas Swinton (1471–1478) and John Darnton (1478–1495), who undertook much-needed restoration of the fabric including notable work on the church. Greenwell reduced the abbey’s debts by 1000 marks and survived a poisoning attempt by a monk called William Downom, while Swinton kept a detailed memorandum book providing exceptional detail on abbey life. Marmaduke Huby (1495–1526) expanded the number of monks from twenty-two to fifty-two and undertook a building programme including an extension to the infirmary and a new tower attached to the north transept, Huby’s Tower, decorated with the abbot’s insignia and religious texts.

Bad harvests and raids from the Scots throughout the 14th century caused economic collapse, worsened by the Black Death in 1348, but despite its financial problems the abbey remained important, and Huby’s great tower symbolised his hope for its future.

During the 400 years the abbey was a religious site its wealth and power grew but ended abruptly in 1539 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. William Thirsk, who succeeded Huby, was accused by royal commissioners of immorality and inadequacy and dismissed as abbot, retired to Jervaulx Abbey, and was later hanged for his involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He was replaced by Marmaduke Bradley, a monk of the abbey who had reported Thirsk’s supposed offences and testified against him and who paid 600 marks to buy the abbacy. In 1539 Bradley surrendered the abbey when its seizure was ordered.

The Crown sold the abbey buildings and 500 acres of land to the merchant Sir Richard Gresham in 1540; he began stripping the abbey of valuable materials and initiated the ruin of the religious buildings. Around 1600 the next owner, Sir Stephen Proctor, commissioned Fountains Hall on the site of the abbey stables partly using material from the ruins. Fountains Hall was the main house on the Fountains Abbey estate until 1767, when it became part of the Studley Royal Estate, and afterward had various uses including accommodation for estate families, offices and storage.

In the 18th century the abbey was incorporated into the designed landscape of Studley Royal created by John Aislabie and his son William. In 1767 William bought the Fountains Abbey Estate and was able to fully incorporate the abbey ruins into the garden. The site was recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1986. Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site combining the UK’s largest monastic abbey ruins with an 18th-century water garden and deer park in one North Yorkshire landscape.

The abbey is protected as a grade I listed building and a scheduled monument.

The monks’ cemetery east of the abbey, north of the infirmary, was long known to exist, but its extent and arrangement were only discovered in 2016. In that year a partnership between the National Trust, the University of Bradford, Geoscan Research, Magnitude Surveys and Guideline Geo used ground-penetrating radar and discovered several hundred graves in a careful and orderly arrangement. In 2021 archaeologists from the University of Bradford and the National Trust discovered the remains of a giant tannery at Fountains Abbey using ground-penetrating radar and other geophysical survey methods in partnership with the National Trust, Mala UK, Geoscan Research and Magnitude Surveys. The find was the largest tannery yet discovered at a monastic site in Britain, and its size indicated an industrial-scale operation requiring hundreds of people.

Two substantial stone buildings were 16m wide, one at least 32m long and more than a single storey in height, with lined pits, tanks and other structures around them; proximity to the River Skell for water was a key requirement for tanning.

Tanning was a vital part of the abbey economy, with animal hides de-haired and cured to make leather for uses such as clothing, belts, bedding, book bindings and vellum or parchment for reproducing religious texts by monastic scribes. Mark Newman, a National Trust archaeologist, said the tannery’s scale revealed an operation meeting the needs for leather and other processed animal skins for a community of hundreds of people and reflected the productivity of the huge herds the abbey acquired and managed. He also said the tannery was much closer to the monks and their worship than previously thought. Fountains in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was as busy and industrialised a piece of landscape as could be found anywhere in Britain, and the bulk of the abbey’s needs for food processing and working raw materials took place in structures set around the wider precinct.

Prof Chris Gaffney, Head of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford, called the find a major discovery that rewrites what is known about the site, and geophysical surveys at Fountains continue to provide stunning, unexpected and intriguing glimpses into life in the past.

The political world into which Fountains was born was one of contested authority. Thurstan, archbishop of York from 1114, had spent five years fighting the claim of Canterbury to primacy over his see, and was consecrated by Pope Calixtus II at Reims on 19 October 1119 rather than by the southern archbishop. Henry I, enraged, kept him out of England for a time; the pope issued bulls releasing York from Canterbury's supremacy and threatening an interdict if the king did not relent. Thurstan's friends, including the king's sister Adela of Blois, reconciled the two, and by Easter 1120 he was back in the king's company in Normandy.

When Henry I died, Thurstan supported Stephen of Blois, and in 1138 he took a leading part in organising the English forces at the Battle of the Standard against the Scots. Shortly before his death on 6 February 1140 he resigned his see and took the Cluniac habit, fulfilling a vow made on an early visit to Cluny. The house at Fountains was made, in part, as a refuge from that same tangle of ecclesiastical politics. The abbey's later troubles were equally political: the Papal Schism of 1378–1409 cut the English Cistercians off from Citeaux, which supported a rival pope, and the English abbots formed their own chapter, drawing them deeper into internecine politics.

Among the abbots, several left marks beyond the buildings. William of Newminster, a noted ascetic, presided from 1180 to 1190 and was followed by Ralph Haget, who had entered Fountains at thirty as a novice after a military career and had previously been abbot of Kirkstall. During the European famine of 1194 the abbey gave local people food, shelter and spiritual care for six months, and as famine was joined by disease it helped those who needed treatment. The end came through the crown's break with Rome.

The ruins drew antiquaries as well as owners. John Richard Walbran, born at Ripon on 24 December 1817, took up the ecclesiastical and feudal history of his native county and made a specialty of the whole Cistercian order through his study of the abbey's records. His paper of 1846 on the need to clear out the conventual church began the excavations at Fountains, carried out under his personal direction. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 12 January 1854 and was mayor of Ripon in 1856 and 1857.

His chief work, the memorials of the abbey of St Mary of Fountains, was left unfinished at his death on 7 April 1869; he is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard, Ripon.

## Photographs

- [Fountains Abbey ruins seen from Southwest. — Klaus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Fountains_Abbey_view02_2005-08-27.jpg)
- [Flood! After 2 days and 6" of rain, the river burst its banks and flowed through Fountains Abbey. — Matthew Hatton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Flood%21_-_geograph.org.uk_-_474545.jpg)
- [Fountain & Water Trough Its been along time since this fountain had any water running through it, although the trough still retains some rain water. It was — Matthew Hatton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Fountain_and_Water_Trough_-_geograph.org.uk_-_632110.jpg)
- [Abbey Ruins The Tower of Fountains Abbey seen from circular footpath. — J Scott](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Abbey_Ruins_-_geograph.org.uk_-_655583.jpg)
- [Part of the rouns of Fountains Abbey, Studley Royal Park, North Yorkshire, seen from the southwest — J Scott](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ruins_of_Fountains_Abbey%2C_North_Yorkshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_655585.jpg)
- [Fountain's Abbey — Sarah Charlesworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Fountain%27s_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_950732.jpg)
- [Buttress Uncovered After years of neglect, this large stone buttress on the south corner of the bakehouse has re-emerged from the undergrowth that had been — Matthew Hatton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Buttress_Uncovered_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1626889.jpg)
- [Fountain Abbey grounds from the Infirmary — DrMoschi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Fountain_Abbey_grounds_from_the_Infirmary.JPG)
- [Cloister portal at Founain Abbey — DrMoschi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Cloister_portal_at_Founain_Abbey.JPG)
- [Fountains Abbey — Admiralgary](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Fountain%27s_Abbey_1.jpg)

## Sources

- [Fountains Abbey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountains_Abbey) — Wikipedia
- [Fountains Abbey](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden) — Official site
- [Fountains Abbey](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden/history-of-fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal) — nationaltrust.org.uk
- [Fountains Abbey](https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2021/fountains-abbey.php) — bradford.ac.uk
- [Fountains Abbey](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden/plan-your-visit-to-fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal) — nationaltrust.org.uk
- [Fountains Abbey view02 2005-08-27.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountains_Abbey_view02_2005-08-27.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Flood! - geograph.org.uk - 474545.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flood!_-_geograph.org.uk_-_474545.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Fountain and Water Trough - geograph.org.uk - 632110.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain_and_Water_Trough_-_geograph.org.uk_-_632110.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Abbey Ruins - geograph.org.uk - 655583.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abbey_Ruins_-_geograph.org.uk_-_655583.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Ruins of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire - geograph.org.uk - 655585.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruins_of_Fountains_Abbey,_North_Yorkshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_655585.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Fountain's Abbey - geograph.org.uk - 950732.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain%27s_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_950732.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Buttress Uncovered - geograph.org.uk - 1626889.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buttress_Uncovered_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1626889.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Fountain Abbey grounds from the Infirmary.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain_Abbey_grounds_from_the_Infirmary.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Cloister portal at Founain Abbey.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloister_portal_at_Founain_Abbey.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Fountain's Abbey 1.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain%27s_Abbey_1.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q540237) — Wikidata

## Detailed history

Fountains Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery near Ripon in North Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1132 under the direction of Thurstan, archbishop of York, and over the next four centuries it became one of the wealthiest monasteries in England because of its large and diverse landholdings. It is a ruined Cistercian abbey in Yorkshire, England, in the UK, part of Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey, with 1132 as its inception date and 1539 as its dissolution date.

After a dispute and riot in 1132 at the Benedictine house of St Mary’s Abbey, York, thirteen monks were expelled, among them Robert of Newminster. Thurstan took them under his protection and provided land in the valley of the River Skell. The enclosed valley provided shelter, stone and timber for building, and running water, and the six springs inspired the monks to name the site Fountains.

Thirteen Benedictine monks founded the abbey in 1132 after leaving St Mary’s in York seeking seclusion. The Archbishop of York gave them a site deep in the Skell valley that was remote but had access to water, wood, stone and earth. The accounts differ on the timing of Cistercian acceptance: one places acceptance three years after the 1132 founding, while another says the monks applied after a harsh winter in 1133 and that in 1135 Fountains became the second Cistercian house in northern England after Rievaulx.

The monks became subject to Clairvaux Abbey under St Bernard. Geoffrey of Ainai taught them the seven canonical hours in Cistercian usage and how to construct wooden buildings in Cistercian practice.

After Henry Murdac was elected abbot in 1143, the small stone church and timber claustral buildings were replaced. The new church was similar in plan to the church at Vauclair Abbey that Murdac had previously commissioned. Within three years an aisled nave had been added and the first permanent claustral buildings, built in stone and roofed in tile, had been completed.

In 1146 an angry mob, annoyed at Murdac because of his role in opposing the election of William FitzHerbert as archbishop of York, attacked the abbey and burned all but the church and some surrounding buildings. The community recovered swiftly and founded four daughter houses. Murdac resigned as abbot in 1147 upon becoming archbishop of York and was replaced first by Maurice, abbot of Rievaulx, then by Thorald, who was forced by Murdac to resign after two years.

The next abbot, Richard, restored the abbey’s stability and prosperity and supervised repairs to the damaged church and more accommodation for increasing recruits. At his death in 1170 the chapter house was complete and the new church almost finished, with Robert of Pipewell continuing the work. During the first half of the 13th century Fountains increased in reputation and prosperity under John of York, John of Hessle and John of Kent. These three abbots completed another expansion including enlarging the church and building an infirmary.

Fountains rose to become the largest and richest abbey in the north of England. The choir monks lived in the abbey and followed the rule of St Benedict in simplicity, solitude and austerity. The lay brothers, who were not monks, provided labour so the monks could spend time in prayer and worship. Fountains became wealthy through wool production, lead mining, cattle rearing, horse breeding and stone quarrying.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the north of England, including Fountains, was subject to increased taxation. Archbishop John le Romeyn criticised the abbey’s dire material and physical state when he visited in 1294. By the 1330s the abbey was no longer working to surplus but having to borrow money.

By the second half of the 13th century the abbey was working in straitened circumstances under eleven abbots and became financially unstable largely because of forward selling its wool crop. The run of disasters continued into the early 14th century when northern England was invaded by the Scots and there were further demands for taxes, culminating in the Black Death of 1348–1349, whose loss of manpower and income was almost ruinous. The Papal Schism of 1378–1409 led English Cistercian houses to break off contact with the mother house of Citeaux. The abbots formed their own chapter to rule the order in England and became increasingly involved in internecine politics.

After Abbot Burley died in 1410 the community was riven by several years of turmoil over the election until John Ripon was finally appointed in 1416 and ruled until his death in 1434. Fountains regained some stability and prosperity under John Greenwell (1442–1471), Thomas Swinton (1471–1478) and John Darnton (1478–1495), who undertook much-needed restoration of the fabric including notable work on the church. Greenwell reduced the abbey’s debts by 1000 marks and survived a poisoning attempt by a monk called William Downom. Swinton kept a detailed Memorandum Book providing exceptional detail on abbey life.

Marmaduke Huby (1495–1526) expanded the number of monks from twenty-two to fifty-two and undertook a building programme including an extension to the infirmary and a new tower attached to the north transept, Huby’s Tower, decorated with the abbot’s insignia and religious texts. Bad harvests and raids from the Scots throughout the 14th century caused economic collapse, worsened by the Black Death in 1348, but despite its financial problems the abbey remained important. The abbacy of Marmaduke Huby marked a period of revival, with the great tower built by Huby symbolising his hope for the abbey’s future.

During the 400 years the abbey was a religious site its wealth and power grew but ended abruptly in 1539 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. The abbey was subsequently used as a stone quarry, adding to its ruinous state. William Thirsk, who succeeded Huby, was accused by royal commissioners of immorality and inadequacy and dismissed as abbot, retired to Jervaulx Abbey, and was later hanged for his involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He was replaced by Marmaduke Bradley, a monk of the abbey who had reported Thirsk’s supposed offences and testified against him and who paid 600 marks to buy the abbacy.

In 1539 Bradley surrendered the abbey when its seizure was ordered under Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries. The Crown sold the abbey buildings and 500 acres of land to the merchant Sir Richard Gresham in 1540. He began stripping the abbey of valuable materials and initiated the ruin of the religious buildings. Around 1600 the next owner, Sir Stephen Proctor, commissioned Fountains Hall on the site of the abbey stables partly using material from the ruins.

Fountains Hall was the main house on the Fountains Abbey estate until 1767, when it became part of the Studley Royal Estate, and afterward had various uses including accommodation for estate families, offices and storage. Fountains Abbey is now within Studley Royal Park, a landscaped garden created in the eighteenth century. It is protected as a grade I listed building and a scheduled monument and forms part of the Studley Royal including the ruins of Fountains Abbey World Heritage Site.

In the 18th century the abbey was incorporated into the designed landscape of Studley Royal created by John Aislabie and his son William. In 1767 William bought the Fountains Abbey Estate and was able to fully incorporate the abbey ruins into the garden. The site was recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1986. Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site combining the UK’s largest monastic abbey ruins with an 18th-century water garden and deer park in one North Yorkshire landscape.

The monks’ cemetery east of the abbey, north of the infirmary, was long known to exist, but its extent and arrangement were only discovered in 2016. In that year a partnership between the National Trust, the University of Bradford, Geoscan Research, Magnitude Surveys and Guideline Geo used ground-penetrating radar and discovered several hundred graves in a careful and orderly arrangement. In 2021 archaeologists from the University of Bradford and the National Trust discovered the remains of a giant tannery at Fountains Abbey using ground-penetrating radar and other geophysical survey methods in partnership with the National Trust, Mala UK, Geoscan Research and Magnitude Surveys.

The find was the largest tannery yet discovered at a monastic site in Britain, and its size indicated an industrial-scale operation requiring hundreds of people. Two substantial stone buildings were 16m wide, one at least 32m long and more than a single storey in height, with lined pits, tanks and other structures around them. Proximity to the River Skell for water was a key requirement for tanning.

Tanning was a vital part of the abbey economy, with animal hides de-haired and cured to make leather for uses such as clothing, belts, bedding, book bindings and vellum or parchment for reproducing religious texts by monastic scribes. Mark Newman, a National Trust archaeologist, said the tannery’s scale revealed an operation meeting the needs for leather and other processed animal skins for a community of hundreds of people and reflected the productivity of the huge herds the abbey acquired and managed. Mark Newman also said the tannery was much closer to the monks and their worship than previously thought. Fountains in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was as busy and industrialised a piece of landscape as could be found anywhere in Britain, and the bulk of the abbey’s needs for food processing and working raw materials took place in structures set around the wider precinct.

Prof Chris Gaffney, Head of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford, called the find a major discovery that rewrites what is known about the site. Geophysical surveys at Fountains continue to provide stunning, unexpected and intriguing glimpses into life in the past. The archaeological investigation was carried out through ground-penetrating radar and other geophysical survey methods.

The political world into which Fountains was born was one of contested authority. Thurstan, archbishop of York from 1114, had spent five years fighting the claim of Canterbury to primacy over his see, and was consecrated by Pope Calixtus II at Reims on 19 October 1119 rather than by the southern archbishop. Henry I, enraged, kept him out of England for a time; the pope issued bulls releasing York from Canterbury's supremacy and threatening an interdict if the king did not relent. Thurstan's friends, including the king's sister Adela of Blois, reconciled the two, and by Easter 1120 he was back in the king's company in Normandy. When Henry I died, Thurstan supported Stephen of Blois, and in 1138 he took a leading part in organising the English forces at the Battle of the Standard against the Scots. Shortly before his death on 6 February 1140 he resigned his see and took the Cluniac habit, fulfilling a vow made on an early visit to Cluny. The house at Fountains was made, in part, as a refuge from that same tangle of ecclesiastical politics. The abbey's later troubles were equally political. The Papal Schism of 1378–1409 cut the English Cistercians off from Citeaux, which supported a rival pope, and the English abbots formed their own chapter, drawing them deeper into internecine politics. Among the abbots, several left marks beyond the buildings. William of Newminster, a noted ascetic, presided from 1180 to 1190 and was followed by Ralph Haget, who had entered Fountains at thirty as a novice after a military career and had previously been abbot of Kirkstall. During the European famine of 1194 the abbey gave local people food, shelter and spiritual care for six months, and as famine was joined by disease it helped those who needed treatment. The end came through the crown's break with Rome. The ruins drew antiquaries as well as owners. John Richard Walbran, born at Ripon on 24 December 1817, took up the ecclesiastical and feudal history of his native county and made a specialty of the whole Cistercian order through his study of the abbey's records. His paper of 1846 on the need to clear out the conventual church began the excavations at Fountains, carried out under his personal direction. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 12 January 1854 and was mayor of Ripon in 1856 and 1857. His chief work, the memorials of the abbey of St Mary of Fountains, was left unfinished at his death on 7 April 1869; he is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard, Ripon.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/fountains-abbey