Fountains Abbey: mining, quarrying
and the acquisition of fuel
Turbulence at
the turbaries
In 1423 rumpuses were sparked off at Fountains' turbaries at
Malham and Kilnsey, when they complained that men had illicitly
cut turves here.
[Bond, Monastic Landscapes,
p. 74].
The Fountains community engaged in industrial
as well as agricultural work, to provide for the community's needs.
Stones for building and roofing had to be quarried and metals mined
to produce a number of implements including tools, horseshoes, and
piping. The monks required pottery cooking vessels, tiles for roofing
and flooring, and fuel to power the forges and for domestic use.
The community therefore secured rights to cut turf (turbaries)
in the rich peat bogs of Dishforth. In areas where peat was less
abundant, restrictions were often imposed to limit how much turf
the monks might cut, and when and where they might do so.(1)
Fountains' industrial activity was not simply
a matter of self-sufficiency, but came equally to involve trade
and commerce. In the 1360s, lead from the abbey's mines in Nidderdale
was bought for roofing Windsor Castle. The Pipe Rolls of 1363 record
that 168 pigs of lead were sent to Windsor via Hull; in 1365 two
wagons and ten oxen carried 24 fothers
of lead from Coldstones to Boroughbridge, where they were then sent
to Windsor by river, via York and London. In the fifteenth century
lead from Fountains' grange at Warsill was sent to York Minster.(2)
By the early sixteenth century Fountains' success in lead trading
had come to the attention and concern of the Fellowship of Merchants
at York. Fearing for their monopoly, they wrote requesting Abbot
Marmaduke Huby to cease business:
We understand that you occupy buying and selling
lead and other
merchandise as a free merchant, contrary to God's laws and man's,
and you being a spiritual man and of religion . We will desire
you
to cease and leave such buying and selling so that we have
no
further cause to complain or else we shall be disposed to complain
to the archbishop of York or the King's grace.(3)
Huby's response is, unfortunately, not known,
but given that the community continued to trade, he was evidently
not overly concerned by these threats.