Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey, near Aldfield in North Yorkshire, England, was founded in 1132 as a Cistercian monastery on land granted by Archbishop Thurstan of York, and over four centuries it grew into one of the wealthiest monasteries in England through extensive landholdings. Most of its surviving buildings, in Romanesque and Early English Gothic styles, were raised between 1170 and 1247, and Historic England has called it the best preserved of England's ruined abbeys. The abbey was dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation, and its ruins later became a landscape feature within the eighteenth-century gardens of Studley Royal Park. Covering some seventy acres and including the abbey church, claustral buildings, infirmary, mills, and bridges, the site is owned by the National Trust, maintained by English Heritage, and was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1986 as part of Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey.