York Guides

The Cistercian Order required the founder of a new monastery to provide temporary buildings for the monks before they arrived on the site. When the first monks of Fountains reached Skelldale, however, they belonged to no Order and had no powerful lay benefactor, so they had to make shift as best they could. During the bitter winter of 1132 they first sheltered under the rocks at the side of the dale, and then built a hut beneath a great elm tree near the eastern end of the present precinct, adding a wattle chapel a little later. When Geoffrey d'Ainai was sent from Clairvaux in 1133 to instruct them in the Cistercian way of life they started to erect timber buildings under his guidance, and a mention of carpenters in 1134 suggests that by then these buildings were being supplemented or replaced by more professional structures.