Fountains used water within and outside of the
abbey precinct to power cornmills, fulling mills, iron mills and
bark mills. The abbey cornmill still stands in the outer court of
the precinct and is the most complete in the country.(28)
Fountains had water mills at Airton, Boston, Elland, Rigton, Sigsworth,
Scosthrop and Bewerley.
The community did not simply build mills for
its own use. A small watermill at Kirkheaton, that was built c.
1200, had been leased to Kirklees Priory by 1241; the nuns in turn
sublet this.(29)
In the later Middle Ages Fountains leased out some of its mills,
for example, its water mill at Rigton.
The lease drawn up in 1514 assigned responsibility
for the upkeep of the ironwork, timber and thatch of the building,
as well as of the dam and leat, to the tenant of Rigton; the abbot
of Fountains was to provide large timber and millstones.(30)
The first medieval iron mill? Reference to 'Smythclough' in a thirteenth-century charter
suggests that Fountains had a water-driven iron working complex
at its grange of Bradley, near Huddersfield which would, in fact,
be the earliest evidence for an iron-mill of this kind in the country.
(31)