Past conservation projects at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal

The year 2017 marked the 300th anniversary of John Aislabie’s acquisition of How Hill, which dominates the landscape just to the south of Fountains Abbey. Archaeologists took advantage of the routine site inspections taking place at How Hill Tower in 2017 to learn more about the site.

It was long known that the monks built a chapel some time before 1346 on the summit of the hill, dedicated to St Michael the Archange. We also knew that it was a pilgrimage site, where receipts from visitors helped in the upkeep of the building.

The chapel was rebuilt early in the 16th century and survived the Dissolution. It served local people for another half-century before falling into ruin. When John Aislabie built his tower in 1719, as an eye-catcher for his new garden, he seems to have preserved much of the ruins as a garden feature.

What the archaeologists unearthed

The archaeologists excavated routine trenches to inspect the tower’s foundations on behalf of the National Trust and found basic footings spreading out from the wall line. On the south side this rested on another footing bonded with a different sort of mortar and made of much finer stonework, a clue to a finer building having once stood here. This east–west foundation continued well away from the tower and seems to be part of the chancel of the medieval chapel.

Other clues included half a dozen small mosaic floor tiles, most likely from the chapel’s floor. In the abbey itself these tiles have always been connected with a painted pavement laid to the orders of Abbot John of Kent between 1236 and 1247. The chapel flooring needn’t be of the same date, but it’s tempting to think it might have been.

'This is a really exciting find, the first time that the chapel of St Michael has been seen in centuries. Naturally we were aware of the possibility that early remains might be exposed but weren’t expecting them here or in this form. We expected the chapel to lie to the west of the tower, it leaves a space on the summit. If these remains are medieval – and it’s hard to think what other period they would date from – then they may well represent a narrow chancel, completely lost before 1719, extending off a wider nave remains of which still survived, further to the west. '

– Mark Newman, archaeological consultant

Rustic Cottage was originally built as a folly and once stood next to the boundary wall between the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal estates. The two estates were separately owned until William Aislabie bought Fountains Abbey from the Messenger family of Fountains Hall in 1767.

From the 1840s Rustic Cottage was used to house estate staff and is thought to have been demolished sometime during the 1930s. We didn’t know much about Rustic Cottage as very few images of the building remain and only a small part of one wall still stands above ground level. In 2016 we excavated the site to understand more about the cottage.

The results of the dig

Digging the trial trenches uncovered lots of exciting information about the history and appearance of the building. Fragments of wall plaster revealed that the interior of the cottage was decorated in an eccentric colour palette over the years. During its use as a garden building, the cottage was originally painted with a midnight blue and then a ‘Pompeian’ red.

We suspect that the cottage was redecorated for domestic use with lighter shades of goose grey, yellow ochres, and duck egg blues and greens. Unexpected fireplaces, indications of well laid flagstone floors and walls of unknown rooms were also among the team’s discoveries.

The moon ponds sit in the formal centre of the water garden and are part of John Aislabie’s original design. Restoration of the classical statues here took place in the 1980s but some of the techniques used caused damage to the surface of the statues and removed all traces of the original paint.

In 2016 specialist conservators spent 5 days working to return four statues – Neptune, Bacchus, the Wrestlers and Galen – in the moon ponds to their original 18th-century appearance.

The restoration process

We knew from research and contemporary images that the statues would have been an off-white colour. In common with other 18th-century gardens, they are made of lead and would have been painted to mimic the appearance of marble at a fraction of the price.

The restoration work involved removing any existing modern grey paint using specialist paint stripping equipment and high-pressure steam. The surfaces of the statues were then primed and any areas of damage filled, before two topcoats of an off-white/grey masonry paint were applied to complete the work.