In its outline Ripon suggests Westminster, although the west front with its twin towers is Early English and not classic. Underneath the present building is the Saxon crypt of Wilfrid’s church, dating from the seventh century.
approached by a pleasant lane, are the lovely glades of Studley Royal, the noble park containing the ruins of Fountains Abbey. The surroundings of the great Cistercian monastery are so magnificent, and the roofless church is so impressively solemn, that, although the place is visited by many thousands every year, yet, if you choose a day when the weather or some other circumstances keep other people away, you might easily imagine that you were visiting the park and ruins as a special privilege, and not as one of the public who, through Lord Ripon’s kindness, are allowed to come and go with very few restrictions beyond the payment of a shilling.
Just after leaving the lodge there appears on the right a most seductive glade, overhung by some of the remarkable trees that give the park its great fascination. The grassy slopes disappear in shadowy green recesses in the foliage, in much the fashion of the forest scenes depicted in tapestries. It is just such a background as the Elizabethans would have loved to fill with the mythological beings that figured so largely in their polite conversation. Down below the beautifully-kept pathway runs the Skell, but so transformed from its early character that you would imagine the crescent-shaped lakes and the strip of smooth water were in no way connected with the mountain-stream that comes off Dallowgill Moor. It is particularly charming that the peeps of the water, bordered by smooth turf that occupies the bottom of the steep and narrow valley, are only had at intervals through a great hedge of clipped yew. The paths wind round the densely-wooded slopes, and give a dozen different views of each mass of trees, each temple, and each bend of the river. At last, from a considerable height, you have the lovely view of the abbey ruins illustrated here. At every season its charm is unmistakable, and even if no stately tower and no roofless arches filled the centre of the prospect, the scene would be almost as memorable. It is only one of the many pictures in the park that a retentive memory will hold as some of the most remarkable in England.
Among the ruins the turf is kept in perfect order, and it is pleasant merely to look upon the contrast of the green carpet that is so evenly laid between the dark stonework. The late-Norman nave, with its solemn double line of round columns, the extremely graceful arches of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, and the magnificent vaulted perspective of the dark cellarium of the lay-brothers, are perhaps the most fascinating portions of the buildings. I might be well compared with the last abbot but one, William Thirsk, who resigned his post, foreseeing the coming Dissolution, and was therefore called ‘a varra fole and a misereble ideote,’ if I attempted in the short space available to give any detailed account of the abbey or its wonderful past. I have perhaps said enough to insist on its charms, and I know that all who endorse my statements will, after seeing Fountains, read with delight the books that are devoted to its story.