Anne Boleyn's Seat (also known as Surprise View) is a famous historic lookout point located within the Studley Royal Water Garden and Fountains Abbey estate in North Yorkshire, England.
Commissioned by William Aislabie in the late 18th century, the lookout was designed as a "sashed Gothic temple" to amaze Georgian-era tourists.
Visitors were led into a wooden building with closed sliding doors; when the doors were suddenly opened, it revealed a breathtaking, framed view of the Fountains Abbey ruins in the distance.
Ironically, Anne Boleyn never actually visited Fountains Abbey.
The site gained its name from a headless marble statue placed nearby.
18th-century visitors linked the decapitated statue to Henry VIII’s beheaded second queen and his subsequent Dissolution of the Monasteries, which caused the ruin of Fountains Abbey itself.