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C O N T E X T 1 5 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8 39 trustees, were seen to be responsible for the abuse of the trust, and the executors of their agent, a Mr Holmes, were obliged to repay the substantial sum of £375 7s 11½d (about £75,000 in today’s money) to the new trustees. Unfortunately, most of this money was absorbed by the costs of the lawsuits required, and only £55 was returned to the charity. It is most likely due to this mismanagement that the archives of the Hospital Trust hold almost no documents that date between the 1720s and the mid-1810s – most of these documents have gone missing or been destroyed; alternatively, proper records may never have been kept in the first place. There are no sketches, no drawings, no plans, no contracts, no building accounts, no let- ters – no primary source documents that might identify definitively the building’s architect, the decision-makers, or the process of design and construction. It was known that the hospital was endowed by the will of a man from Linton, Richard Fountaine (1639–1722), who earned a fortune as a merchant in London. Little beyond that was known for certain about Fountaine the man, and many unfounded stories circulated in the 20th century – most due to the inventions of a novelist, Halliwell Sutcliffe, who himself came to live in Linton, and wove fictions about the legends of the Dales. The only instruction that Fountaine left in his will was that the building should be: ‘built in such a decent manner and proportion as the [trustees] shall seem (sic) meet and convenient.’ Fountaine’s will is lengthy, and prescriptive on many other matters – for instance, down to the colour of the garments that residents of the almshouses must wear, and how often they should go to church service. It is therefore significant that the rigorous Richard Fountaine leaves the decisions about the design of his monument to others. Such is the impact of the building, and the swirl of mystery surrounding its origins, that it provokes many questions in the observer interested in its architectural history and context. Who made the key decisions about the style and design of the building? Who was the architect? Why was it built here in Linton? Are there other models or examples on which this building draws? The architecture of the building itself throws up many issues. The original building, built between 1722 and (probably) 1726 was on the form of an E-plan, comprised of the fine north facade, with its side ranges and protruding wings, and the central chapel. In 1892, there was a major extension in the form of a south-east wing, to provide a further two units. The main frontage is formed in regular coursed ashlar (finely cut stone), with pediment and cor- nice mouldings and dressings.The side (east and west) and rear (south) elevations are by contrast built of conventional early-18th-century Dales vernacular masonry, mostly random rubble wall- ing with only very basic dressings or none at all. One of the most striking features of the almshouse is the obvious contrast between the high status and quality of the north elevations, The north-west corner of the almshouse