A History of Lancashire

by Henry Fishwick

“A remarkable deformity in this edifice, and for which there is no apparent reason or necessity, is that the north door, which is the principal entrance, is on one side of the window above it. The tower has been supported by four magnificent arches, of which only one remains entire. They rested upon four tall pillars, whereof three are finely clustered, but the fourth is of a plain unmeaning construction. The west end of the church seems to have been an additional part intended for a belfry to ease the main tower, but that is as plain as the east. The east end of the church contained five altars besides the high altar, as appears by the chapels, and probably there was a private altar in the sacristy.

“In magnitude this abbey was second in England belonging to the Cistercian monks, and the next in opulence after Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. The church and cloisters were encompassed with a wall, which commenced at the east side of the great northern door and formed the straight enclosure; and a space of ground to the amount of 65 acres was surrounded with a strong stone wall, which enclosed the mills, kilns, ovens and fish–ponds. The inside length of the church from east to west is 275 feet 8 inches; the thickness of the east end wall and the depth of the east end buttress is 8 feet 7 inches; the thickness of the west end wall 9 feet 7 inches; the extreme length of the church is 304 feet 6 inches; the inside width of the east end is 28 feet, and the thickness of the two side walls 10 feet. The inside width of the cloister is 31 feet 6 inches; the area of the quadrangular court is 338 feet 6 inches by 102 feet 6 inches.”

Since this description was written many researches have been made, and much light thrown on various points of interest. The church is ascribed to the time when John de Cauncefeld was Abbot—i.e., about A.D. 1160. Of the parts of the church still remaining in fair preservation, the most conspicuous are the transepts, which are 126 feet long, by 28 feet wide. At the north end of the transepts is a Transitional doorway which is rich in its ornamentation and mouldings; above it is a magnificent window, probably inserted in the fifteenth century.

Various monuments have been discovered, one of which is probably the effigy of William de Lancaster, the eighth Baron of Kendal, whose Inquisition is dated 31 Henry III. (1246–47).

The beautiful groined roof of the chapter–house was intact until the end of the last century. Beyond the chapter–house was the fratry, or monks’ common room, which was 200 feet long, and over it were the dormitories. Near the western tower the walls of the hospitium, or guest–house, may still be traced. At the south end of the ruins there is a building with a groined room which has generally been called the school–house, but many authorities now consider that it was a small chapel, as it contains a large east window and a piscina; if this be so, then it was without doubt the Abbot’s private chapel. The date assigned to it is early in the fourteenth century.

Near to the abbey the Preston family, to whom the site was granted soon after the dissolution,[179] built their mansion, and part of this house now forms the Furness Abbey Hotel. In 26 Henry VIII. the rentals belonging to the abbey amounted to £942 per annum, of which tithe offerings and ecclesiastical fines came to £182. In 1540 these possessions were annexed to the Duchy of Lancaster, and were not finally alienated therefrom until the time of James I. From the Prestons it passed by marriage to Sir William Lowther, Bart., whose son and heir married Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of William, Duke of Devonshire; his son and heir, dying without issue in 1756, bequeathed all his estates to his cousin, Lord George Augustus Cavendish.

The coucher book of Furness is still preserved in London; it is a handsome volume containing 293 folios. On the seizure of the abbey in 1537 this volume and other memorials, trussed in three packs, were sent by Cromwell on the back of three mules to London, and £1 15s. 4d. was expended on their conveyance. It was afterwards placed in the duchy office, and ultimately handed over to the Record Office.[180]

Before the end of the twelfth century a new religious order was formed, of which the first house in England was the priory of SS. Julian and Botulph in Colchester, in 1105 (or 1107). This was the canons regular of St. Augustine, who subsequently held 175 religious houses in Great Britain. At Cartmel a priory of this order was founded in 1188 by the Earl of Pembroke; it was dedicated to St. Mary, and displaced the ancient parish church, which, if not of Saxon origin, was certainly a very early foundation. One of the privileges of this house was that it had the exclusive right to furnish guides to conduct travellers over the treacherous sands across the estuary of the Kent. To the fact that this parish church became the priory church we no doubt owe its preservation, as at the dissolution of the monasteries it did not share the fate of so many fine examples of early Church architecture, but still remains a noble monument of the past. At Coniston, in the extreme north of the county, in 1188 was founded a small hospital for lepers, and it would thus appear that even to that remote district leprosy had spread. This hospital was given in charge of some monks of St. Augustine’s Order, who converted it into a priory, at the same time appropriating to themselves the church of Ulverston, over 40 acres of land, and other possessions. It is, however, only fair to add that they took charge of the lepers when there were any. Though never of any considerable size or importance, yet in its early days its establishment consisted of over a dozen canons and a Prior, and the usual number of attendants. After its dissolution in 1536 every trace of it was swept away. Of the Præmonstratensian Order there were two houses in Lonsdale Hundred—one at Cockersand, and the other at Hornby. Amongst this order—which was introduced into England in 1120—a greater strictness of discipline and a less external code of duties prevailed than amongst the Austin canons.

The history of Cockersand is somewhat obscure, but at an early period there was here a hermitage, which was afterwards a hospital, presided over by a Prior, and dependent upon the abbey at Leicester, founded by William of Lancaster; but in 1190 it became an abbey of the Præmonstratensian canons. It was one of the lesser houses which were given to the King in 1536, when it consisted of 22 religious men and 57 laymen, with an annual income of about £200 arising from a rather large rent–roll and customary boons and services.