FOUNTAINS abbey was the second of the Yorkshire houses to be founded. In spite of its rather inauspicious beginnings, Fountains became the largest and richest of the Northern abbeys and headed an extensive family that extended to the shores of Norway. Fountains stemmed from the Benedictine house of St Mary’s, York, where a group of reform-minded monks fled from their abbey to pursue a harsher and more disciplined way of monastic life. [St. Bees].

They were at first sheltered by Archbishop Thurstan, who assumed the role of patron and adviser. Thurstan had served in the royal households of William Rufus (1087-1100) and Henry I (1100-1135); the latter appointed him to the see of York in 1114. The early years of Thurstan’s office were troubled by the dispute between the archbishops of York and Canterbury, over the primacy of Canterbury. Thurstan played a prominent role in the political events of 1138, and was largely responsible for summoning the English troops who successfully defeated the Scots at the Battle of the Standard. This guaranteed the safety of the north of England. Thurstan was also an active supporter of monasticism in the north of England and had particularly close links with the Cistercian abbeys of Byland, Fountains and Rievaulx, ‘the three great luminaries of the North’ [William of Newburgh, Augustinian Canon].

The Fountains community was especially indebted to Thurstan; it was he who sheltered the band of Benedictine monks who had fled from their abbey of St Mary’s, York, seeking simplicity and solitude. The archbishop accommodated the monks at his own manor and later provided them with land at Skelldale, where they established a community that later became the Cistercian abbey of Fountains. Thurstan remained a friend and patron. Shortly before his death in February 1140, Thurstan took the monastic habit at the Cluniac priory of Pontefract in Yorkshire, where he was buried in front of the High Altar. This was in fulfilment of a promise he had made at Cluny as a young man.

Throughout the Middle Ages Fountains played a prominent role in Cistercian, ecclesiastical and political affairs. Indeed, Abbot Henry Murdac (1144-7) spearheaded opposition to William Fitzherbert's appointment to the see of York. Fountains also made an important contribution to poor relief during the famine of 1194-6 that afflicted Western Europe. The community helped a number of needy souls who flocked to the abbey gates, extending spiritual and bodily care.

Fountains experienced financial problems in the 1290s and, like all of the northern houses, fell victim to the Scots in the early fourteenth century. The abbey recovered its fortunes in the fifteenth century and by the time of the Dissolution Fountains was the richest Cistercian abbey in Britain and the twenty-fourth wealthiest house in the country.