Fountains Abbey Walk: Deer Park and the Seven Bridges Valley

A Circular Route Through Studley Royal on the Fountains Abbey Walk

Start your Fountains Abbey walk from the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Visitor Centre. There are two large free car parks to choose from, car park A and car park B, both reached from the roundabout on the Fountains Abbey access road near the visitor centre. Car park A is the closer of the two to the visitor centre, where the walk begins. Fountains Abbey can get very busy, but both car parks are large and car park A has an even larger overflow area alongside it. You’ll also find electric vehicle charging at the car parks. Do bear in mind that both are locked at 6 pm according to the signs.

After parking, make your way to the entrance of the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Visitor Centre. On the grassy picnic area in front of the entrance you’ll notice a signpost, and you should follow the route for St Mary’s Church and Studley Royal Deer Park. A further sign directs you along a surfaced stone path signposted to St Mary’s Church and Studley Royal Water Garden via Deer Park. Follow this path for about a third of a mile with woodland on your left and a large hedgerow on your right, running parallel to the Fountains Abbey access road.

At the wooden gates, turn right to enter Studley Royal Deer Park, again signposted to St Mary’s Church and Studley Royal Water Garden via Deer Park. Immediately on entering the park, turn right along a grassy path signposted to the Studley Royal Entrance and Studley Royal Water Garden. Keep to the main path and follow it downhill to the car park above Studley Lake.

At the car park, take the second road on the left down to Studley Lake, signposted to the Seven Bridges Valley. Walk around the edge of Studley Lake and cross the footbridge beside the weir, then turn left and take the stony track signposted to the Seven Bridges Valley. Follow it for approximately half a mile through the valley, crossing the arched stone bridges over the River Skell as you go. The valley takes its name from an original seven bridges, though only five remain today.

You’ll reach the metal gates that lead out of Studley Royal Deer Park and into Chinese Wood. Follow the path through the woods, ignoring the right turn across the footbridge and the ford across the River Skell that also lies to your right. Leave the woodland behind, coming out into open arable farmland, and continue north along the stony track for about two-thirds of a mile, passing Plumpton Hall on the way. Plumpton Hall marks roughly the halfway point of this Fountains Abbey walk.

You’ll come to a bungalow called Studley Lodge on your right, with the gated entrance to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal on your left. Continue straight ahead towards the village of Studley Roger and walk along the road through it. After passing the Old Post House about halfway through the village, turn left onto a public footpath and follow it directly ahead between the fields. Walk through a metal gate to enter Studley Royal Deer Park, where a large interpretation board shows a map of the area.

Instead of following the grassy path straight ahead, turn right in the direction of Studley Hall Stables and the site of the lost Studley Hall. The map on the interpretation board makes a useful guide, as it shows the main grassy paths and hard-surfaced lanes across the deer park. Continue along the main grassy path until it splits at a fork, and take the left-hand path. A little further on you’ll reach a T-junction with another path. Turn right here and follow the path down to a bridge with parapets built from very large stone blocks. Cross the bridge and you’ll soon reach a hard-surfaced lane. Turn left and follow it towards Studley Royal House, which sits on your right.

At the driveway leading to Studley Royal House, rather than carrying straight on along the hard-surfaced lane, take the grassy path on your right that heads diagonally across the fields. Halfway across, the path splits at a fork, and you should take the right-hand fork. When you reach the hard-surfaced lane near Chorister’s House, turn right. Walk past the front of the National Trust holiday cottage called Chorister’s House and then past St Mary’s Church, following the hard-surfaced lane to the gates that lead out of the deer park. Turn left and follow the path for about a third of a mile all the way back to the visitor centre and car park to finish your Fountains Abbey walk.

Fountains Abbey Walk: Distance, Duration, Statistics

Recommended Ordnance Survey Map

The best map to use on this walk is the Ordnance Survey map of Nidderdale, reference OS Explorer 298, scale 1:25,000. It clearly displays footpaths, rights of way, open access land and vegetation on the ground, making it ideal for walking, running and hiking. The map can be purchased from Amazon in either a standard, paper version or a weatherproof, laminated version, as shown below.

About Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey was founded in 1132 by thirteen Benedictine monks who had left St Mary’s Abbey in York in search of a simpler and more secluded religious life. The Archbishop of York gave them land in the sheltered valley of the River Skell, where fresh water, woodland and local stone provided the resources needed to establish a monastery. Three years later, the community joined the Cistercian Order, whose members followed a disciplined life centred on prayer, manual work and self-sufficiency. The River Skell continues through the estate and into the Seven Bridges Valley, one of the most memorable parts of this Fountains Abbey walk.

Over the following centuries, Fountains Abbey grew into the largest and wealthiest abbey in northern England. Its prosperity came from extensive estates and activities that included wool production, cattle rearing, horse breeding, lead mining and stone quarrying. Much of this work was carried out by lay brothers, allowing the choir monks to devote more of their lives to worship and study. The surviving ruins reveal the scale of the monastery, including its church, cloisters, chapter house, refectories, infirmaries and water mill. Huby’s Tower, completed shortly before the abbey’s closure, still rises prominently above the valley.

Monastic life at Fountains Abbey ended abruptly in 1539 during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Crown sold the abbey and around 500 acres of land the following year, after which valuable materials were removed and many of its buildings gradually fell into ruin. Around the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir Stephen Proctor built Fountains Hall close to the abbey, partly using stone taken from the former monastic buildings. Despite centuries of change, the extensive remains still provide an unusually complete picture of the layout and workings of a major medieval religious house.

In 1767, William Aislabie acquired the Fountains Abbey estate and joined it to his family’s neighbouring landscape at Studley Royal. The medieval ruins became a dramatic feature within the water garden created by his father, John Aislabie, and later expanded by William. The wider landscape explored on this Fountains Abbey walk includes Studley Royal Deer Park, where open grassland, ancient trees and herds of deer form part of the historic designed estate. Recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, the estate brings together centuries of religious, architectural and landscape history.

Fountains Abbey Walk: My Photos

I start my Fountains Abbey walk at the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Visitor Centre, with its distinctive timber-clad building and steeply pitched glazed roof rising above the dry stone wall. There are two large free car parks to choose from, both an easy stroll from here, and I find plenty of space along with electric vehicle charging points. It’s worth remembering that the car parks are locked at 6 pm, so I make sure to give myself enough time to complete the walk.

On the grassy picnic area in front of the visitor centre I come to a wooden signpost, which points the way to all the main parts of the estate. The arms direct visitors towards the visitor centre and entrance, St Mary’s Church and car park A, along with Studley Royal deer park half a mile away. I follow the direction for St Mary’s Church and the deer park to begin the walk properly.

Before passing through the wooden gates into Studley Royal Deer Park, the parkland opens up ahead of me, with the obelisk standing in the foreground and St Mary’s Church rising behind it. The present stone obelisk dates from around 1815 and marks the end of the long avenue that runs down towards Ripon, while the church lifts its tall, elegant spire above the trees. I’ll pass much closer to the church later on, so for now I simply take in the view.

Inside the deer park, I make my way along the grassy path that winds ahead towards Studley Lake. The mown track cuts a clear line through the open parkland, with mature trees standing well spaced across the grassland on either side. This is classic English deer park scenery, an easy and gentle opening to the walk.

I reach Studley Lake and look across the water towards the dam at its southern end. The two small stone buildings set along the balustraded dam are the fishing tabernacles, built for John Aislabie and completed in 1728, and they once served as bases for fishing trips out onto the water. Between them a cascade spills down into the lake, and the whole arrangement is one of the earliest features of the great water garden the Aislabies laid out here.

I make my way around Studley Lake, following the stone track along its edge. The lake marks the furthest extent of the eighteenth-century water garden, and with young trees lining the bank in their guards, the going is calm and level here, an unhurried early stage of the Fountains Abbey walk.

At the northern end of Studley Lake I cross the footbridge over the outflow, where the water spills away and the River Skell continues on its course. A stone sphinx sits on a plinth to either side of the outflow, and this point marks the start of the Seven Bridges Valley that lies ahead.

The path leads me into the Seven Bridges Valley, one of the most memorable parts of the Fountains Abbey walk, where the River Skell winds along the floor of a steep-sided valley. Here I cross the first of the stone bridges, a low humpbacked arch built from rough local stone that carries the path over the water. These rustic bridges replaced earlier wooden ones in the Chinese style, part of the landscape William Aislabie developed here from the 1740s to create a picturesque route through the valley.

A little further on I come to the second and third bridges, set close together where the river bends through the valley. Beside them the path drops to a cobbled ford, a reminder that each bridge was built with a ford alongside it so the river could be crossed either way. The valley sides steepen here into rocky, exposed crags, and high on the ridge stands the Roman Monument, a folly of about 1740 also known as the Devil’s Chimney, which gives this part of the walk a wilder feel than the open parkland behind me.

The fourth bridge comes next, an arch tucked against the green flank of the valley as the path keeps following the meandering Skell. The slopes rise steeply on either side, clothed in grass and scattered trees, with woodland crowding the tops.

I reach the fifth and last of the surviving bridges, close to the point where the path leaves the deer park. Of the original seven that gave the valley its name, only these five remain today. Ahead of me a walled boundary and gates mark the way out of Studley Royal and into Chinese Wood, where William Aislabie once laid out an elaborate Chinese garden, of which little now survives.

I leave Chinese Wood behind and come out into open arable farmland, following the stony track north as it passes Plumpton Hall. The hall is a stone farmhouse of the mid seventeenth century, later altered around the turn of the nineteenth. Its tall chimneys and the small arched-light window set high in the gable rise above a flower-filled cottage garden. Plumpton Hall marks roughly the halfway point of this Fountains Abbey walk.

I come to a bungalow called Studley Lodge on my right, a single-storey house rendered in soft yellow and set behind black iron railings at the edge of the deer park. Its pointed Gothic-style windows and tall chimneys give it a decorative, estate look, in keeping with the many designed buildings scattered across Studley Royal.

Just opposite, on my left, is the gated entrance to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, where a long straight drive runs off through the deer park towards a classical stone archway flanked by lodges, with the spire of St Mary’s Church rising beyond. This lime avenue is one of the estate’s great designed views, laid out so that, looking the other way to the north-east, it lines up directly with Ripon Cathedral on the skyline. The drive into the park faces the opposite way to that famous view, and rather than turning in through the gates I keep to the road, carrying on towards the village of Studley Roger.

I enter the village of Studley Roger, a small estate village of stone and brick houses that grew up alongside the Studley Royal estate. On my left stands Lawrence House, a large house of the late seventeenth century, now divided into two dwellings. Its brickwork is crowned by a pedimented gable with a semicircular lunette window, with canted bay windows below. The lane curves on gently between garden walls into the heart of the village.

A little further on I pass Studley Roger Village Hall, set back behind a high stone wall with a wooden bench beside it that makes a welcome spot to stop for my lunch. A wooden field gate carries the hall’s name, and beyond it sit the modest brick and rendered cottages that make up this quiet corner of the village.

After passing the Old Post House about halfway through Studley Roger, I turn left onto a delightful public footpath that leads directly ahead between the fields. The narrow path runs straight between a wire fence on one side and an arable field on the other, its margin thick with wildflowers, with poppies, cornflowers and daisies scattered among the tall grasses.

I go through a metal gate and re-enter Studley Royal Deer Park, where a large interpretation board with a map of the area helps me get my bearings. The board explains that the grassland here is grazed by herds of red, fallow and sika deer, and I study the map for a moment before carrying on with my Fountains Abbey walk.

Rather than following the grassy path straight ahead, I turn right in the direction of Studley Hall Stables and the site of the lost Studley Hall. The great house that once stood here was destroyed by fire in 1946 and later demolished, though its early eighteenth-century stable block survives nearby as a private house. The mown path leads on across open parkland dotted with mature trees, among them a bare, skeletal tree that stands out against the grassland.

As I follow the grassy path through the park, I notice Wheatbrigs House in the distance on my right. This is one of the oldest parts of the whole estate, a deer park that dates back to 1343 and even covers the site of a lost medieval village. Many of the great trees standing across the grassland were planted by the Aislabie family between 1717 and 1756, when the park was laid out as part of their designed landscape.

I’m so pleased I took the time to explore this park, because here in a small valley I come across a herd of deer. Fallow deer have been kept at Studley Royal for more than five hundred years, and today they are joined by red and sika deer, all of them still classed as wild animals even though they live within the park. Watching them move through the long grass is one of the real pleasures of this Fountains Abbey walk.

A little further on I reach the stone bridge, its parapets built from very large blocks of stone. It carries the path low across a dip in the parkland, a simple, solid crossing well suited to the open landscape of the deer park.

I pass Studley Royal House on my right, an imposing Palladian building of honey-coloured stone with a pair of pavilion towers linked by an arcaded central range. This is not the original mansion but the estate’s former stable block, built for John Aislabie between about 1728 and 1732. The great house it once served stood nearby until it was destroyed by fire in 1946, after which the surviving stables became the private house seen here today.

From Studley Royal House I take the grassy path that heads diagonally across the fields. The mown track runs through open parkland scattered with mature trees, an enjoyable leg of the Fountains Abbey walk.

Halfway across, the path splits at a fork, and I take the right-hand branch. Mature parkland trees are scattered across the grassland, and I catch more views of the deer grazing among them as I go.

I follow the grassy path towards Chorister’s House, which now comes into view ahead. Beyond it the spire of St Mary’s Church rises above the trees, drawing me on towards the far side of the park.

The path brings me up to Chorister’s House, an eye-catching building from every angle. It was designed by William Burges, the same architect responsible for St Mary’s Church, and built in 1873 for the first Marquess of Ripon. Its steep tiled roofs, octagonal turret with a conical cap, decorative timber framing and mullioned windows all show the rich, medieval-inspired style for which Burges was famous.

Coming round to the front, I can see the twin-arched stone porch, above which are carved a set of heraldic shields and the stag badge of Lord Ripon. The house takes its name from the Marquess’s original plan for it to house a music school or choir, together with the church organist, though it seems to have been used instead as a house for the church’s sacristan. Now Grade II* listed and owned by the National Trust, it is let as a holiday cottage, and it stands on the closing stretch of my Fountains Abbey walk.

From Chorister’s House I follow the hard-surfaced path towards St Mary’s Church, which stands proudly on rising ground ahead. Its soaring spire has been a landmark for much of my Fountains Abbey walk, and now I finally draw close to it, with a lone tree framing the view across the meadow as I approach.

St Mary’s Church was built between 1871 and 1878 by the first Marquess and Marchioness of Ripon, and it stands as a memorial to the Marchioness’s brother, Frederick Grantham Vyner. He was killed by bandits in Greece in 1870, and his family put the ransom money that had been raised but never needed towards building two churches in his memory, of which this is one. The other, its sister church, is Christ the Consoler at Skelton-on-Ure.

The church is the acknowledged masterpiece of William Burges, one of the finest architects of the Victorian age, who designed it in a rich Early English Gothic style. Outside, the tall spire rises like that of a small cathedral, while the interior is celebrated for its coloured marble, stained glass and gilded, painted figures. Now Grade I listed and no longer used for regular worship, it is cared for by English Heritage and managed by the National Trust, standing at the highest point of the whole deer park.

Leaving the deer park behind, I follow the footpath signposted back to the visitor centre. The way runs for about a third of a mile along a shady, tree-lined track, an easy and pleasant close to the Fountains Abbey walk that brings me almost full circle to where I began.

I arrive back at the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Visitor Centre, where the walk comes to an end. Run by the National Trust, the centre has a large shop and plant centre, a restaurant serving hot meals, sandwiches and cakes, and toilets, and both the shop and restaurant are free to visit whether or not you have a ticket. This is also the point where you can buy admission to the paid part of the estate and head down to the abbey ruins and water garden, though on this occasion I complete my circular Fountains Abbey walk here at the visitor centre.