The perfect compliment to the Abbey is Studley Royal Water Garden, a Georgian masterpiece of an ornamental green garden adorned with Classical statues and follies. 

 

Once wild and wooded, the valley of the river Skell was transformed into one of England’s most spectacular Georgian water gardens by the Aislabie family. 

 

John Aislabie inherited the Studley Royal estate in 1693. A socially and politically ambitious man, he first became the Tory Member of Parliament for Ripon in 1695 and in 1718 became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

 

In 1720 disaster struck his career; ddisgraced by his part in the South Sea Bubble financial scandal, he was expelled from Parliament and disqualified for life from public office. Aislabie returned to Yorkshire and devoted himself to creating a landscape of often breathtaking and ground breaking vision.   

 

After John’s death in 1742, his son William extended his father’s work by purchasing the remains of the Abbey. He also extended the landscaped area in the picturesque romantic style, contrasting with the formality of his father's work. Between them, the two created what is arguably England's most important 18th century Water Garden.

 

The Water Garden, with its formal, geometric design and its extraordinary vistas, was inspired by the work of the great French landscape gardeners but is entirely individual in character. Studley was also influenced by the work of Queen Anne’s gardeners, George London and Henry Wise.

 

His gardener William Fisher was an employee of the estate, and the garden works were carried out by local labour under the direction of local man John Simpson, who was succeeded in 1728 by the master mason Robert Doe from London.

 

The only professional advice John Aislabie appears to have received was from the distinguished Palladian architect, Colen Campbell, who designed the Banqueting House. It was originally envisaged as an orangery, but later embellished, deliberately rusticated and fitted out for the purposes its name suggests. 

 

Temple of Piety

The Temple of Piety, the subject of one of the most photographed vistas in the Water Garden, was probably started in 1729-30 as a dedication to Hercules.  It is a perfect example of neo-Classicism and was designed as cool garden house on the shady side of the valley. 

 

It was later re-designed as a symbol of filial piety by William Aislabie soon after his father's death in 1742.

 

Classicism pervades the garden and the Moon Pond, with its flanking crescent basins, provides the setting for three lead statues of Bacchus, Neptune and Galen. 

 

The only stone statue in the garden depicts Hercules and Antaeus, who sit alongside the Formal Canal.

 

The Temple of Fame and the Octagon Tower

Follies were popular features in Georgian gardens and examples at Studley are the gothic Octagon Tower on its high rocky outcrop reached on foot through the twisting Serpentine Tunnel, and the Temple of Fame, a rotunda with wonderful views across the garden believed to have been used by the Georgians as a picnic spot.

 

Both these follies are reached by the taking the path known as the High Ride, which climbs up the valley side and commands magnificent views of the Water Garden.

 

Surprise View

The climax of the garden tour comes at the end of the High Ride and is known as "The Surprise View" or Anne Boleyn's Seat.  So called because paintings show that there was a decapitated statue on this spot before the acquisition of the abbey by Aislabie in 1768. 

 

It was during the late 18^th century that the statue acquired the name Anne Boleyn when a link was seen between the decapitated state of the statue, Henry VIII's second queen and the dissolution of the monasteries.  The statue was restored to its original position in 2001. 

 

But the name "Surprise View" is more apt - there is an astonishing view of the abbey ruins in the distance. The sight was designed to cause a sharp intake of breath, especially when the building's sliding doors (no longer extant) were in place.

 

Other features of the Garden include the Rustic Bridge, Hermit’s Grotto, Half Moon Pond, Cascades, Canal, Fishing Tabernacles, Drum Fall and the Seven Bridges Valley in the Deer Park.