Fountains Abbey

Klaus with K (license)

Of the three abbeys we visited — Hailes, Easby, and Fountains — Fountains Abbey was the biggest and best preserved. Fountains Abbey in its day must have been truly magnificent. The most obvious feature of the abbey is its 160-foot tall tower, which despite having been destroyed by Henry VIII, still towers over the valley. Approaching the abbey from the visitors’ center, the tower can be seen rising above the walls of the valley, and you don’t realize that you’re looking at just the very top of a tall tower until you walk the quarter mile to valley edge.

The tip of the iceberg:

The rest of the tower:

But big as the tower is, the abbey itself is massive. While some of the abbey has been reduced to foundations, as was most of Hailes, there are still substantial portions standing, including most of the church:

Can you imagine the size of the stained glass window that went in there?

But there was more — much more — to the abbey than the tower and church.

Cloister court:

Great cloister (there is a cross way down at the far end):

And in addition to the remains of the great abbey, for the price of admission (free to National Trust members), you get to walk the entire grounds of Studley Royal Park, a designated World Heritage Site. Personally, I’m not big into looking at plants, so gardens don’t really excite me, so I stayed with the kids while Melinda checked out the Studley Royal Water Garden.

Iain Gilmour (license)

Overall, Fountains Abbey was the biggest and best of all the abbeys we visited. While there is no reason to restrict yourself to visiting just one abbey, if you can only visit one, visit Fountains. We visited Hailes Abbey, in the Cotswolds, first, which is the poorest preserved of the abbeys we visited. However, we are glad we did, since its audio tour was probably the best (though Fountains was also very good). However, if we had visited Hailes Abbey after Fountains, we would have been sorely disappointed, so if you are visiting more than one abbey on your trip to Britain, visit Fountains Abbey last. We liked Fountains Abbey so much, we went back for a second visit.

Count this a definite recommendation for Fountains Abbey.

Hailes Abbey

In addition to allowing the king to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s conversion to Protestantism enabled him to close the monasteries and steal their riches. On Christmas Eve 1539, his commissioners arrived at Hailes Abbey near Winchcombe, turned out the Cistercian monks, and seized all the gold and wealth of the abbey. After they left, other vultures showed up to loot anything the commissioners had missed, and so, for 500 years, Hailes Abbey, which had once housed a vial of Jesus’s blood (burned by Henry’s agents), fell into disrepair and was forgotten.

We visited the ruins of Hailes Abbey after our visit to the Roman villa in Chedworth. The road from Chedworth to Hailes is almost entirely one-lane narrow country roads, up and down the hills of the Cotswolds. It was a challenge to find, and we had to stop at a farm to ask for directions, since it was really hidden away. In fact, if we had approached it from any direction other than Chedworth, it would have been much easier to find, as it wasn’t too far off the beaten path.

Very little of Hailes Abbey remains, but there is an outstanding audio tour available that teaches you all about the abbey and leads you around the foundations. Like other National Trust sites, parking and admission is free to members. The audio tour costs £1, which gives you an audio guide for each member of the family (as opposed to one to share), which means your kids can go at their own pace. This proves helpful, as our 8 year-old raced through and then enjoyed running around the ruins while we old fogeys stepped through the entire tour.

At the museum shop, the docent had samples of some local wine for sale, which we sampled and then bought a bottle.

While not a must-see on your English itinerary, it was good enough that I would recommend it if you’re in the area. You can do the whole abbey in about an hour.