Wooden Cross - The Cloisters, Fountains Abbey.

All Cistercian monasteries were built in remote locations, away from civilisation, so that the monks could concentrate on their severely religious way of life. Home comforts and decoration were forbidden, so Cistercian abbeys were simple and basic in their architecture, with no impressive towers or ornamentation, no painted glass, and wooden crosses in the church rather than the usual gold or silver. Fountains itself was founded by 13 monks from the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at York, who had heard of the growing Cistercian Order and sought permission to start a monastery of their own.