York Guides

The main entrance to the precinct was from the west, at the point where the visitor today leaves the Aldfield road to enter the grounds. Here stood the west gates, of which there are no remains. They led to a narrow court-almost a corridor-flanked on the south by the river and on the north by a high wall, part of the eastern end of which remains and shows traces where sheds for carts stood against it.

This court was the abbey's main link with the outside world and it contained a number of buildings, but its arrangements were mostly destroyed by the building of Fountains Hall. One of the buildings was the Chapel of St. Mary at the Gates, for the use of layfolk and especially of women, who were not admitted farther into the precinct except on special occasions. Another was the hospice or lay-infirmary where rudimentary medical treatment was given to the poor. It had its own endowments, even including one to provide veils for the heads of those being treated for ringworm. It was a very considerable establishment, which included the services of the almonry where charity was dispensed to the poor, a common dormitory or 'casual ward' for tramps and other poor travellers, and chambers for aged pensioners.

In the later Middle Ages, although a monk-porter was still nominally in charge of the hospice and the west gates, the actual work was done by a lay porter and his wife who doubled as laundress to the abbot. They had their own cottage and land for a stable in the court.

The only medieval building now remaining in the court is a ruin tucked into the slope just east of the nineteenth-century west lodge. It is of twelfth-century date and may have formed part of the hospice

The gatehouse and the great court

The eastern end of the outer court was closed by the gatehouse which gave access to the great court in front of the abbey buildings.

The gatehouse was built early in the thirteenth century, and its arrangements are best understood by reference to the plan, for the lower parts of its walls are buried and the only remains now visible are the upper parts of the north and south walls of the gate passage. This passage was once entered by a wide western archway and it was vaulted throughout. The western part formed a covered lobby or porch outside the gates, which were hung within the passage. There was a large gate for carts and a smaller doorway for pedestrians, and beyond them a short hall with an eastern arch into the great court. The south side of the gate passage was covered by an equally long and narrow building. It had doorways into the passage both in front of and behind the gates, and it was the porter's lodge, giving him access to visitors waiting in the porch for the main gates to be opened. There was also a doorway on the north side of the passage, behind the gates, that probably led to stairs to an upper floor.

Projecting from the west end of the porter's lodge and forming part of the structure of the gatehouse there was a smaller gate passage through the south wall of the outer court. This led by way of the mill bridge to the southern parts of the precinct beyond the river.

The cemetery and the eastern precinct

The cemetery lay beyond the east end of the Chapel of the Nine Altars. It was thoroughly ransacked after the dissolution, and only a few grave covers remain.

Beyond the cemetery, the eastern parts of the precinct north of the river were taken up by orchards and gardens.

The southern precinct and its buildings

The steep southern slope of the valley opposite the abbey buildings was wooded in the Middle Ages, as it is now, and was known as Kitchen Bank. Beyond it, on the brow of the hill, there was an enclosure called Pondgarth from the group of fishponds it contained. There is a smaller fishpond farther to the west. Pondgarth was enclosed by 8 acres of orchard known as East Applegarth, and west of this were three more orchards, amounting to 12 acres, called the West Apple-garths.

The main agricultural and industrial buildings of the abbey lay in this part of the precinct, south of the river, but the sites of most of them are not known. They included the barns, the tannery, the wool house, the cheese house, the mills, the malthouse, the bakehouse, the carpenter's shop, the wheelwright's shop, the smithy, and many more. Only the mills and the combined malthouse and bakehouse survive. They were reached by a road which left the outer court through the small gate passage at the west end of the gatehouse.

The mill bridge

This road crossed the Skell by a fine early thirteenth-century bridge of two arches which remains complete. The northern arch took the flow of the Skell and of one of the two leats that fed the mill. The southern arch took the outfall of the second leat, now blocked.

The mill

The mill was fed by a leat drawn from the Skell just outside the west wall of the precinct and led parallel to that river and some 20 yds south of it to a point about 100 yds south west of the gatehouse, where it widened into a millpond straddled by the abbey mill. The mill (or mills, for there were two water-wheels and two cornmills under o'ne roof) is a remarkable building that remained in use from the twelfth to the early part of the twentieth century. Although the north end was demolished after the dissolution and partly replaced by lower structures, the medieval building still stands to a length of no ft. It was first built before the middle of the twelfth century, and was remodelled later in that century and early in the thirteenth century. It is not at present open to visitors.

The bakehouse

The bakehouse is much ruined and overgrown. It lies on the south bank of the Skell opposite the guest houses, and it was built in the first half of the thirteenth century but made use of the thick north and south walls of an earlier twelfth-century building on the same site.

Few of its arrangements can be made out today, but originally there was a stone-paved passage at the south end, with a doorway and a fireplace. A narrow room lay north of this, its centre taken up with a battery of two or possibly three ovens. To the west of the ovens there was a semicircular stone recess with a groove for a waterpipe, and in front of it a large stone trough. This was perhaps a kneading place for dough, and there are traces of another one farther west where the outer wall of the building projects to house it. North of the ovens was a larger room, and the east side of the whole building was covered by a pentise.

The malthouse

The malthouse backs on to the south wall of the bakehouse and is also much ruined. It was built in the second half of the thirteenth century as an aisled hall with deep responds at each end and two pairs of piers between. The north-west respond had a circular hearth or kiln with a breast projecting into the west aisle. The central part of the building had a slightly raised stone floor with a circular drain at its north-west angle. In the south part of the building, the end of the west aisle was walled off to form a small room, and the central nave was filled by a great circular vat of cemented brick.

This vat would be for steeping and draining the barley, the raised platform in the centre of the floor would be for drying, and the kiln at the north-west angle would be for a final drying of the malt under heat. The building had an upper storey, probably used for brewing, as chases for waterpipes descend from it.

Another building was added to the east side of the malthouse in the fourteenth century, with a fireplace in the south-east angle and a privy in the north-east angle. It may have been of two storeys, serving as chambers and offices for the two obedientiaries who had charge of the building-the monk of the bakery and the monk of the brewery.