Fountains Abbey: History
• Origins
• Sources
• Foundation
• Consolidation
• Trials and Tribulations
• Strength and Stability
• End of Monastic Life

Fountains Abbey: Buildings
• Precinct
• Church
• Cloister
• Sacristy
• Library
• Chapter House
• Parlour
• Dormitory
• Warming House
• Day Room
• Refectory
• Kitchen
• Lay Brothers' Range
• Abbots House
• Infirmary
• Outer Court
• Gatehouse
• Guesthouse

Fountains Abbey: Lands

Fountains Abbey: People

Water power

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Fountains utilised 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.(107) Fountains had water mills at Airton, Boston, Elland, Rigton, Sigsworth, Scosthrop and Bewerley.

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.
[Bond, Monastic Landscapes, p. 323]

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.(108) 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.(109)