Founded in 1132, the abbey operated for 407 years, becoming one of the wealthiest monasteries in England until its dissolution, by order of Henry VIII, in 1539.

After a dispute and riot in 1132 at the Benedictine house of St Mary's Abbey, York, 13 monks were expelled, among them Saint Robert of Newminster.

They were taken under the protection of Thurstan, Archbishop of York,[3] who provided them with land in the valley of the River Skell, a tributary of the Ure.

The enclosed valley had all the natural features needed for the creation of a monastery, providing shelter from the weather, stone and timber for building, and a supply of running water.

[11] In 1146 an angry mob, annoyed at Murdac because of his role in opposing the election of William FitzHerbert as archbishop of York, attacked the abbey and burned down all but the church and some surrounding buildings.

[20] During the European famine of 1194 the abbey provided support for six months to local people in the form of food, shelter and spiritual care.

[22] During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the north of England was subject to increased taxation, Fountains Abbey included.

According to William Grainge, writing in Annals of a Yorkshire Abbey: A Popular History of the Famous Monastery of Fountains, the taxation of temporal goods had reduced from £343 in 1292, to £243 in 1318.

It was presided over by eleven abbots, and became financially unstable largely due to forward selling its wool crop,[25] and the abbey was criticised for its dire material and physical state when it was visited by Archbishop John le Romeyn in 1294.

[26] The run of disasters that befell the community continued into the early 14th century when northern England was invaded by the Scots and there were further demands for taxes.

During Greenwell's abbacy, he reduced the debts of the abbey by 100 marks, and survived what was characterised as a poisoning attempt by a monk called William Downom.

[31] Marmaduke Huby (1495–1526) expanded the number of monks from twenty-two to fifty-two, and undertook a building programme which included a new tower at the north end of the transept and extending the infirmary.

The area consists of three concentric zones cut by the River Skell flowing from west to east across the site.

The early abbey buildings were added to and altered over time, resulting in deviations from the strict Cistercian type.

[45] The cloister, which had arcading of black marble from Nidderdale and white sandstone, is in the centre of the precinct and to the south of the church.

Only the base of a pier and a table leg survive of the guest hall, but its plan has been established by geophysical survey.

It was long known to exist, but its extent and arrangement were only discovered in 2016, when a partnership between the National Trust, the University of Bradford, Geoscan Research, Magnitude Surveys and Guideline Geo used ground penetrating radar which discovered several hundred graves in a careful and orderly arrangement.

At the outset, the Cistercian order rejected gifts of mills and rents, churches with tithes and feudal manors as they did not accord with their belief in monastic purity, because they involved contact with laymen.

After several years of impoverished struggle to establish the abbey, the monks were joined by Hugh, a former dean of York Minster, a rich man who brought a considerable fortune as well as furniture and books to start the library.

Shortly after the fire of 1146, the monks had established granges at Sutton, Cayton, Cowton Moor, Warsill, Dacre and Aldburgh[50] all within 6 mi (10 km) of Fountains.

They had urban properties in York, Yarm, Grimsby, Scarborough and Boston from which to conduct export and market trading and their other commercial interests included mining, quarrying, iron-smelting, fishing and milling.

[54] Apart from the renting out of land, the monks themselves and their laybrothers, numerous in the early period, were committed on a large scale to its efficient development and the management of the landscape, not least the watercourses and woods.

[58] The archaeological excavation of the site began under the supervision of John Richard Walbran, a Ripon antiquary who, in 1846, had published a paper On the Necessity of clearing out the Conventual Church of Fountains.

The National Trust bought the 674-acre (273 ha) Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal estate from North Yorkshire County Council in 1983.

Following a suggestion by Commander Clare George Vyner,[71] it was designed by the architect and artist Arthur Edward Henderson (1870–1956), and constructed from plastic by P Kemp and E Wilson at workshops in Surbiton.

[73] Henderson's book on Fountains Abbey compares photographs of various parts of the ruin with his drawings of how that section would have looked originally.

[77] During the cold winter of December 1981 Fountains Abbey was used as a location by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark for the music video of their single "Maid of Orleans (The Waltz Joan of Arc)".

[82] In October and November 2020, a number of scenes of the second season of the Netflix original The Witcher were filmed in the abbey and its surroundings.

[83] The TV programmes Flambards,[84] A History of Britain,[85] Terry Jones' Medieval Lives,[86] Cathedral,[87] Treasure Hunt,[88] and Gunpowder,[89] have also been filmed there.

Fountains Abbey features twice in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Books with poetical illustrations by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.