Sunday, August 25, 2013

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, 2013

We visited Fountains Abbey in 2009, paying rather more attention to the abbey ruins than to the enormous 18th century water gardens that adjoin and actually encompass it. The family that owned Studley Royal purchased the abbey ruins to be one of their gardens' many follies. It is all World Heritage Site now, owned and administered by the National Trust and English Heritage. And this time we did the water gardens tour with a guide and pretty much skipped the abbey.
In the dress-up room: "O Lord, we beseech thee,
Amen"



















Main bits of the abbey ruins; it was England's largest and
most prosperous Cistercian abbey, finally laid low by the
plague, resulting full employment and higher wages,
public contempt for ecclesiastical greed and ostentation;
and then Henry VIII

















Location, location, location: a beautiful valley, nice river,
about forty yards down from the quarry















First of the many large water features, the rectangular pond














Nice little temple/folly, the first of several


















The huge circular pond














Flanked by the crescent ponds














More temples














More follies, all with fine views


















More lakes, ponds, the deer park; alas, the great house
burned down in 1946















Beautiful Victorian church on the grounds
commemorating the loss of a family member


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