Fountains Abbey
“Abbey! for ever smiling pensively,
How like a thing of Nature dost thou rise,
Amid her loveliest works! as if the skies,
Clouded with grief, were arch’d thy roof to be,
And the tall trees were copied all from thee!
Mourning thy fortunes—while the waters dim
Flow like the memory of thy evening hymn;
Beautiful in their sorrowing sympathy;
As if they with a weeping sister wept,
Winds name thy name! But thou, though sad, art calm,
And time with thee his plighted troth hath kept;
For harebells deck thy brow, and, at thy feet,
Where sleep the proud, the bee and red-breast meet,
Mixing thy sighs with Nature’s lonely psalm.”
Back to York
We have been trying to figure out how we’re going to manage space in the rental car when Dave and Christa arrive at the end of July.
One solution was to ship some stuff home. The only good place to do that in the UK is from Mail Boxes Etc and their closest office is in York (about 45 minutes away).
So, on Tuesday we drove back to York and MBE boxed up about 75 pounds of stuff—talking about lightening your load!
On the drive into York we saw some real life Travelers (Gypsies) making their way down A168: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD5-EmU_kEA
Walmgate Bar
When I had coffee at Gatehouse Coffee a week ago, Amanda was searching for her next great thrift store discovery. Since she never saw Walmgate Bar, we walked over and went through the fortification-turned-coffee-house together.
Looking from “inside” the city, amazingly, the 15th-century wooden gates still remain!
You can just make out the construction of the doors: vertical slats on the front and horizontal slats on the back. Note too the tiny wicket (door) built into the left door.
You can just see the spikes from the wooden portcullis poking through the second archway.
At the entrance of the barbican looking toward the main entrance.
Amanda on top of the barbican.
Inside the coffee house (the first room above the gate), you can see the retracted wooden portcullis lattice is being used as a display case. How’s that for blending the old with the new?
We stopped inside the Vanilla Café and had afternoon tea with raspberry vanilla cake.
Look Up!
One of the best pieces of travel advice we can give, especially when visiting city environments, is to look up. We get so busy with what is in our natural eye lines that we miss surprises.
Love the cloven hooves.
Brimham Rocks
The following day (Wednesday) we visited Brigham rocks—weird and wonderfully shaped giant rock formations, created by an immense ancient river.
Long ago, grit and sand was deposited in layers, the angles changing depending on the direction the river was flowing.
Love the tree growing out of the rock!
In time an ice age occurred. The gritstones at Brimham were stronger than other local stone and so resisted glacial movement—leaving the rocks exposed above the glacier and subjected to fierce arctic weather, further eroding the rocks into even more fanciful shapes.
Today it’s a nature-made playground where families flock and kids scamper through the giant rock playground.
We think this was the first week of summer vacation because there was a noticeable increase in kids at places we visited midweek.
There were over a dozen named formations, but this was our favorite: Idol.
Fountains Abbey
In a pleasant little turn of serendipity, we arrived at the famous Fountains Abbey only to learn that the ruins were actually part of a larger Georgian water garden known as Studley Royal.
Imagine you are a wildly rich Englishman who owns tremendous amounts of land and who desires to impress everyone by creating on that land a world class water garden.
You don’t need to be Capability Brown to know that a central aspect of design is the focal point.
Imagine now that you are not only vastly wealthy and intending to build a grand garden on your estate, but that on the adjoining estate rests the remains of one of England’s greatest abbeys—and the family who owns the property where the abbey rests is in declining financial standing.
Say it all together now, “Focal Point.”
Beginning in 1723 the owner of the Studley Royal estate devoted himself to manifesting his grand vision for the shaping of the landscape.
As you can see, the water garden was not exactly waiting for Fountains Abbey to make it complete; it certainly stands on its own.
But 44 years into the reshaping of the vast landscape, in December 1767, the owners of the Fountains estate sold the property to their neighbor William Aislabie, combining the Studley and Fountains estates.
Aislabie already knew his water garden was grand, but now he had on his hands the opportunity to incorporate something truly astonishing—what could be more dramatic than an abbey ruin seamlessly integrated into your garden?
An upper path known as the High Ride traverses along the hill above, incorporating three observation points that overlook the dale below and its many water features.
Above, the Octagon Tower, which is accessed through the Serpentine Tunnel, the entrance to which is seen just below the tower.
The Temple of Piety
The two Crescent Ponds rest on either side of the circular Moon Pond in the center.
As you climb the hill behind the lake before entering the Serpentine Tunnel to the top, you get yet another view of the landscape below. The Crescent Ponds, Moon Pond, and Drum Fall leading to the long Lower Canal are all visible below.
Entering the Serpentine Tunnel with the Octagon Tower visible above.
From the High Ride, standing in the second viewpoint, the Temple of Fame overlooks the garden below.
The final stop is named Surprise View, the reason for which should become obvious.
Through the door is Anne Boleyn's Seat.
In 1771, Anne Boleyn's Hill was the first named part of the gardens, where an antiquarian headless statue looked out on the valley.
The canalization of the river near the Abbey was undertaken in 1773, which used the river as a framing device for the view of the abbey from Anne Boleyn's Seat.
The River Skell flows past the abbey, around the man-made bend, and into Half-Moon Reservoir, as seen above.
Rustic Bridge
From the reservoir, the river flows under the Rustic Bridge, and into the Upper Canal (as seen above and also the first water feature seen at the top of this part of the post).
That eventually flows down Drum Fall and into the Lower Canal (also seen in the early parts of the post).
After the two long, rectangular canals, the water flows down the Fishing Tabernacles and Cascade, into Studley Lake, and eventually down the Seven Bridges Valley.
Studley Royal also includes a large deer park. The entire landscape is truly is a marvel, and one that could easily take an entire day to explore in all its parts.
And now you can see how the 14th century abbey ruins were flawlessly incorporated into a grand 18th century water garden.
In 1986, the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO has ten criteria for becoming a World Heritage Site. Once criterion is to be considered a feat of “human creative genius.”
The globally-influential design of the massive ruins of Fountains Abbey as the centerpiece of the 18th century water gardens at Studley Royal, earned the site its UNESCO status.
The long history of Fountains Abbey began in 1132 when a group of 13 Benedictine monks from St Mary’s Abbey in York came to this wild and wooded valley in search of a simpler and more devout life.
The abbey ruins tell the story of 400 years of riches, ruin, and revival—brought to a disastrous close by the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 under Henry VIII.
As we said before with Whitby Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey—there is a certain beauty in the remains of these once great buildings; the glaring imperfections somehow lend them a tranquility.
Entropy is what we all face in the end, and this holds a kind of beauty—if we choose to see it.
