Every monastic community required a reliable
water supply not only for was
hing, drinking, cooking and brewing,
but for liturgical purposes, for industrial work and, not least
of all, to remove waste from the site. Water management meant working
with nature, to make quality water available in some places, and
to provide a strong current in others, for example, to power mills
and carry away waste. Water management also meant removing water
from where it was not needed, whether this was rainwater that might
cause flooding, waste water from the kitchens, or waste products.
This could be a highly complex process, and the community's survival
was effectively dependent on a secure supply of water.
The site at new Byland was in many ways unsuited
to the establishment of a monastic community, for no river ran through
the area and the monks were completely dependent on the local springs
and rainfall for their water supply. Moreover, the
land here was swampy, and required excessive drainage to
prepare the site for building work.(32)
In spite of these disadvantages, the Byland community successfully
established an ambitious system of water management. From the mid-twelfth
century, when the monks were still residing at Stocking, work was
begun. Ditches were built to drain the marshland, and the watercourse
was extensively altered to provide a water supply. This involved
diverting almost every beck to drain westwards, towards the Irish
Sea, rather than eastwards, towards the North Sea. In fact, there
is now scarcely a beck from Wildon to Thorpe Grange that runs in
its natural channel.(33)
The Headstream at Holbeck was used to supply a chain of eight small
ponds to the west of the abbey precinct. These were probably used
as hatcheries and stretched almost to the monks' site at Stocking.
Each of these ponds had a small, dam, and several of these survive.
The valley to the north of the precinct was flooded, and some of
the overflow was used to fill the cistern and to flush the drains.
Two ponds to the south and west of the precinct were created near
to the mills. The earlier of the two, which was created in the twelfth
century, received the outfall from the sewers and powered the cornmill;
it was later used to supply the cloth fulling mill and a second,
smaller, mill was built to the west to serve the cornmill. These
mill ponds could also contain fish and were therefore multi-functional.
The monks also constructed larger fish ponds
near the abbey precinct. The first was at Kilburn, and when the
community lost the right to this in the late twelfth century, the
monks began to create a new pond at Cams Head. This was stocked
with bream from the royal pond at Foss in 1245.