Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal – Page 2

Last on the Card

A veteran sweet chestnut tree at Studley Royal.

Oh, I’ve just remembered. Happy Yorkshire Day.

For Brian’s Last on the Card: July 2024.

Just beyond the walls surrounding Fountains Abbey estate is a farm rented by a tenant farmer. It includes a small patch of land, untended and fenced off, because several trees got here first. They’re yew trees, and they’re thought to be about 1400 years old.

Think how long ago that was. It was only a couple of hundred years after the Romans had finally left these isles. It was several hundred years before the Norman invasion of 1066. By the time a group of monks from York had come to the site to build a Cistercian community here in 1132, those trees were already some 500 years old. This area would have been wooded, wild and interspersed with occasional farms. There would have been wolves, wild boar, lynx, otters, red and roe deer. But no rabbits. There’s no archaeological evidence for rabbit stew in any of the nation’s cooking pots from those days. They probably came with the Normans.

Those trees – once seven, now only two – would have been witness to the monastic community maturing: to the abbey and all its supporting buildings and industries developing. They would have seen the community grow, then all but collapse during the Black Death in 1248: and slowly prosper again. Until Henry VIII dissolved all the monastries, and Fountains Abbey’s roof was hauled down in 1539, leaving it pretty much the ruin it is today. By then, the trees were working towards being 1000 years old.

They’ve always been a bit out on a limb, these trees, and that’s what has made them such a rich habitat. They offer protection and nest sites for small birds, who can also eat their berries . Caterpillars feast on the leaves. These days, they’re home to eight species of bat, and a wide variety of owls. Yew trees are famously toxic to most animals – that’s why they’re fenced off – but badgers are able to eat the seeds, and deer the leaves.

A red deer stag grazing on leaves: not yew leaves this time.

I can’t show you any of the creatures for whom these trees are their neighbourhood – apart from a grazing deer at nearby Studley Royal. Just the ancient trees themselves, the nearby Fountains Hall, built in late Elizabethan times when they were already 1000 years old, and a slightly more distant view of Fountains Abbey itself. My featured photo, the last image I took in June, is of those yew trees, looking as though they’re ready for the next 1000 years.

Fountains Hall, as seen from the yew trees.

Fountains Abbey, as seen from the yew trees.

This is for Brian’s Last on the Card, and – somewhat tenuously – for this week’s Lens-Artist Challenge from Tina: Habitat.

The phrase ‘Half as old as time’ was actually coined by John William Burgon in 1845, in his poem ‘Petra’.

Pick a Word – then Pick a Photo

Here’s a challenge and a half. Take five words, chosen monthly by Paula of Lost in Translation, and illustrate them. Here are the words: MONASTIC; ABANDONED; CRYSTAL; ECHOING; AFFABLE.

Monastic was easy. Of course I chose Fountains Abbey, a religious community from 1132 until Henry VIII caused it to be surrendered to the crown in 1539, under the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It’s where I have the privilege of volunteering, so it’s almost become my back yard. Here, in my featured photo, is the Abbey in autumn.

Abandoned? So much choice. I’ve picked a rather wrecked house in Seville.

Crystal was trickier. I don’t move in the right circles. But here is a crazed plate glass window on a ferry bound for Spain which has a slightly crystal-ish look.

You may not think my next photo illustrates ‘echoing‘. But trust me – it does. I was among the first passengers to arrive at London Bridge Underground Station just after 5.00 a.m one morning recently. There was not another soul on my platform. Only me. It echoed.

And we’ll stay in London for my last image, a cheery one. This affable chappie was snapped on a day out with Sarah of Travel with Me fame. He was part of a fun sculpture trail for children’s wheelchair charity Whizz Kidz.

So there you have it. Following the links to Paula’s and Sarah’s posts will show you very different interpretations, and perhaps you’ve seen others in blogs you follow too.

The Deer of Studley Royal

‘That woman. Seen her before. One of those volunteer Roaming Rangers isn’t she? I think she’s harmless.’

‘I’m not sure. I’m off …’

‘That one’s a scaredy-cat. Who’ll be back. We’ll just wait here and see what happens…’

‘There. Told you she means no harm. She’s off to see the red deer now…’

Wandering red deer hinds …

Just one calf …

Young stags – no chance of breeding this year …

Ah, those antlers are more like it. Best rest now while they can … They’ll be battling it out in the rutting season.

And just to finish off, here are two classic portraits of stags, for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. The first is a young sika…

… the next a mature red deer.

For Fake Flamenco

Here’s my offering this month for Rebecca of Fake Flamenco fame’s poetry challenge. If you look, you’ll see her visual prompt invites us to focus on swans, stained glass, flowers, or a family restaurant. I have chosen – er – not to focus on a swan and flowers.

Studley Royal, early one summer’s morning

In summer, the gardens here 
refrain from flowers.
Instead the trees, the hedges, lawns are
verdant, grassy, leafy, viridescent.

A swan glides silently along the Skell.
Birds carol, chirp & chatter.
Here is serenity and peace.

I have no idea why the swan’s head has been partly chopped off . It was there before …

New Life

Spotted yesterday at Studley Royal: new life – burgeoning; the devoted parents moving forward – often – to protect their young by hissing threateningly at passers by who paused to admire the new babies; renewing and reconstructing the bloodline.

Yes, Becky’s Squares photo challenge has returned – hooray! The only rule is that the image chosen has to be square. This month’s theme is Renew. Or Burgeoning. Or Moving Forward. Or Reconstructing. You get the idea. So here is my first offering.

The photos is also my Last on the Card for Brian. It has of course been doctored to form a perfect square. This is against the rules. But Brian knows I invariably break the rules.

It’s Daffodil Time at Fountains Abbey

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

An Asymmetrical Amble

Last week, I invited you to join me in Spain, and hunt for the symmetrical. This week, we’ll stay closer to home, and have a countryside wander looking for the asymmetrical for Dawn’s Lens-Artist Challenge.

What we’ll do is start off in the Yorkshire Dales. Let’s peek over a drystone wall and look at the patchwork of small fields that has evolved over the centuries, way before agri-business and the space-gobbling demands of giant machinery.

Conditions are harsh: not too many trees then. But those there are battle to reach maturity and stay upright against prevailing winds. Symmetry is the last thing on their minds.

Look carefully. At the right hand side of the hollow trunk, some fond grandfather (I’m guessing) has fashioned a door to the hollow trunk, to make a very special tree-house.

Let’s hurry back to civilisation, before darkness falls. Here in Studley Royal is a blasted tree that always reminds me of the antlers of the red deer stags who call this area home.

And here too are ancient tree roots, complete strangers to symmetry: some of the older stumps house fungi.

Oh look. Darkness is falling.

Let’s hurry into town. Bright lights, big city. Perhaps we could grab a warming mug of hot chocolate to thaw out our chilly fingers. And that’s where I’ll leave you for now. See you soon, I hope.

It’s a bit of a stretch to get from Studley Royal to London in time for the final photo-op of the day (250 miles). Photographer’s licence.

Autumn Colours

It’s mid October. Autumn should be well-advanced. But it isn’t. It’s hardly started. To give us a taste of what we should be enjoying just now, I’ve dipped into the archives, and have planned a walk round Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, so you can enjoy with me the autumn colours of leaves still clinging on to the trees, leaves that have fallen, equally tawny fungi, and stags poised to battle it out to be King of a Harem, and father of the next generation of red deer .

For Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #31: Autumn Colours

Some Favourite Photos

This week, for the Lens Artists Challenge, Tina invites us to show off ten of our all-time favourite photos. Not only must we explain why we like them, but they have to be technically top-hole too. I can’t do it. When an image is freighted with memories, whether happy or exciting or astonishing, unpicking these from technical considerations is something this snap-shot-ist can’t do. I shall be disqualified. I can live with that.

I first ‘needed’ a camera when I had the chance to spend a month travelling in India in 2007. I was even more point-and-shoot than I am now. Here’s just one memory, taken from my hotel window in the French quarter of Pondicherry (as it was then called), Builders, both men and women, unstacking their consignment of bricks to begin their day’s work at 6.00 a.m. Some of my best memories come from staring out of that window: such as the women who cleaned the streets at night, sitting right in the middle of the road at 2.00 a.m. cheerfully chattering during their break.

By then, we were already living in France. How to pick just a few shots from that period? Let’s have a go. I’ll choose pale and delicate wild daffodils in the mountains just outside Foix, in such profusion it was almost impossible to avoid treading on them. I’ll choose pristine snow, many feet deep, just waiting for a Sunday snow-shoeing outing. The only sound was the snow itself, squeaking softly as we trod it down with our raquettes. I’ll choose a dramatic , never-repeated sunset which glowered over our small town one spring evening.

And sea-voyages. We’ve had a lot of those – back and forth to France when we lived there and came back here often to see family. Nowadays it’s because we need to get to Spain where my daughter and her family live. There’s often a dramatic skyscape.

And now North Yorkshire’s home, with its stone-walled Dales, its meadows and hills, its autumn fogs.

And then there’s Fountains Abbey, where I spend so much time volunteering. Can’t leave that out. We’re just coming into autumn, which may be my favourite season there. So the Abbey in Autumn in my featured photo.

So these are my choices today. Yesterday I might have chosen differently. Tomorrow I’d choose other shots.

PS. Can anybody tell me why WP is no longer always allowing me to centre my photos? Or – now that WP have made it impossible to comment directly onto a post, how to comment on a post that’s more than a couple of days old, such as Tina’s one about this challenge, and which is no longer reachable on the Reader?

Category: Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal