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Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
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The end of monastic life: the Dissolution of Fountains (5/6)
Whereas the buildings at Roche Abbey were demolished and pillaged almost as soon as the monastery was suppressed, Fountains was temporarily spared, for the king had originally intended to make this the site of a new bishopric which would extend over Richmondshire. The former monastery buildings were to serve the new bishop.(133) A change of plan meant that the new bishopric was instead made at Chester Abbey, where the Benedictine monastery there was preserved. With no reason to spare Fountains any longer, the demolition process began with a vengeance in 1540. The new owner of the site, Sir Richard Gresham, was instructed to make the buildings uninhabitable, so that there would be no danger of a monastic community reconvening there. The buildings were thus dismantled and stripped of anything of value. Furnaces were built in the church to melt the lead from the roof and pipes; the fire was fed by timber from the screens and furnishings. Although all lead and glass was, in theory, Crown property, window-glass and lead found their way to York and Ripon.(134) Whilst Sir Richard Gresham obeyed Crown orders and dismantled the site, he did not cause a scene of devastation for he sought to build a house from the ruins. As Fountains did not suffer the scale of destruction experienced elsewhere it is therefore today one of the most complete set of medieval Cistercian ruins.(135) Grave robbers at Fountains
When the site was excavated in the mid-nineteenth century there was evidence that a number of the graves at Fountains had at some time been looted. An interesting discovery in 1979 raised the possibility that this occurred shortly after the dissolution of the abbey, when Fountains was still in royal hands. This hypothesis is based on the fact that the tomb-stone of John Ripon, the cellarer of Fountains who died in 1524 and was buried in the south transept of the church, had been broken into and his remains disturbed, to dig out the mortuary chalice and paten that had been buried with him; the body was then flung back into the grave, the slab replaced and relaid with considerable care, to ensure that any missing parts were patched with plaster. Indeed, this ‘interference’ had not been noticed until the grave was excavated. It has been argued that restoration work of this nature could only have happened when the abbey was in royal hands, suggesting that pilfering was at that time illicit.(136) However, it is surely possible that this tampering occurred before the Dissolution, when Fountains was still in monastic hands, perhaps by someone who had witnessed the burial and seen for himself the mortuary chalice and paten. |
