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Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
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The various kinds of holdings (17/33)
Arable and pastoral farming The Fountains community cultivated a variety of crops, primarily, wheat, oats, rye and barley. Although the Cistercians were and are essentially associated with sheep-farming, Fountains, like other Cistercian communities, kept a wide range of livestock, including oxen, cattle, goats, pigs and horses - brood mares and foals, carthorses, packhorses and saddlehorses. Dairy farming was particularly important on Fountains’ estates in Nidderdale and became increasingly so from the mid-fourteenth century, when less energy was channelled into wool production and more into dairy farming.(71) Indeed, by the time of the Dissolution there was a 2:1 ratio of cattle to sheep at Nidderdale, a sizeable difference to the 5:1 ratio in the thirteenth century.(72) Fountains had a number of vaccaries [cattle farms] in Nidderdale, which would have supplied the monastery with fresh dairy produce. Bewerley grange was central to dairy farming in the region; other important vaccaries were at Bouthwaite, Bramley Grange and Dacre.(73)
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