The need for leather and parchment continued throughout the abbey’s life, and whilst in later years the numbers of lay brothers reduced (due to social changes including better economic and other opportunities outside the abbey community) the tannery remained in operation right until the last days before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in October 1539. This is described in some detail in a lease of the early 1530s.
Recognition of the scale of the community of lay brothers may help to explain the very large number of burials previously discovered in the monastic cemetery nearby. Monks and lay brothers were buried together as equals.
Mark Newman added: “The scale of the operations we’ve discovered here really takes one aback, but it all fits the bigger picture once you get over the initial surprise. The Cistercians – and especially the community at Fountains – were pioneering farmers and land managers on an industrial scale. They had to be, to support the enormous religious community that rapidly built up and the vast building projects they undertook, in praise of God.
“Their wealth was originally based on wool, but later diversified into cattle-raising too, while the need for processed animal skins was constant throughout the abbey’s life. In later years, when the herds were mainly managed by lay tenants as part of their rent, even the skins of any fallen stock had to be brought to the abbey for curing, so that as much as possible was put to practical use”.
Chris Gaffney, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford commented: “Geophysical survey at Fountains Abbey continues to provide us with stunning, unexpected and intriguing glimpses into life in the past at the site. Each high-resolution dataset is of great interest in imaging the buried archaeology but visualising these with the digital model that we have created of the upstanding remains has provided a completely new ‘view’ of the site. As the technology advances, so does our understanding of the archaeology at Fountains Abbey.”