FURNESS ABBEY
Scrutinising the various parts, the visitor will find very many other beautiful elements. With the space at our command it is impossible here even to mention them, or to do more than concentrate material for a volume into the simple remark that Furness Abbey remains one of the most striking mementoes England possesses, alike of the tasteful constructive art of the men who reared it and of the havoc wrought, when for four centuries it had been a centre of public usefulness, by the royal thirst, not for reformation, but for spoil. The overthrow of the abbeys no doubt prepared the way for the advent of a better order of things; but it is not to be forgotten that the destruction of Furness Abbey brought quite a hundred years of decay and misery to its own domain.
FURNESS ABBEY
Of Whalley Abbey, within a pleasant walk from Clitheroe, there is little new to be said; few, however, of the old monasteries have a more interesting history. The original establishment, as with Furness, was at a distance, the primitive seat of the monks to whose energy it owed its existence having been at Stanlaw, a place at the confluence of the Gowy with the Mersey. In Greenland itself there is not a spot more desolate, bleak, and lonely. It was selected, it would seem, in imitation of the ascetic fathers of the Order, who chose Citeaux—whence their name—because of the utter sterility. After a time the rule was prudently set aside, and in 1296, after 118 years of dismal endurance, the whole party migrated to the green spot under the shadow of Whalley Nab where now we find the ruins of their famous home. The abbey grounds, exceeding thirty-six acres in extent, were encircled, where not protected by the river, by a deep trench, crossed by two bridges, each with a strong and ornamental gatehouse tower, happily still in existence. The principal buildings appear to have been disposed in three quadrangles, but the merest scraps now remain, though amply sufficient to instruct the student of monastic architecture as to the position and uses of the various parts. Portions of massive walls, dilapidated archways, little courts and avenues, tell their own tale; and in addition there are piles of sculptured stones, some with curiously wrought bosses bearing the sacred monogram "M," referring to the Virgin, to whom, as said above, all Cistercian monasteries were dedicated. The abbot's house did not share in the general demolition, but it has undergone so much modernising that little can now be distinguished of the original structure. The abbot's oratory has been more fortunate, and is now dressed with ivy.
The severest damage to this once glorious building was not done, as commonly supposed, temp. Henry VIII., nor yet during the reign of his eldest daughter, when so great a panic seized the Protestant possessors of the abolished abbeys, and the mischief in general was so cruel. "For now," says quaint old Fuller (meaning temp. Mary), "the edifices of abbeys which were still entire looked lovingly again on their ancient owners; in prevention whereof, such as for the present possessed them, plucked out their eyes by levelling them to the ground, and shaving from them as much as they could of abbey characters." Whatever the time of the chief destruction wrought at Furness, that of Whalley did not take place till the beginning of the reign of Charles II.
Third in order of rank and territorial possessions among the old Lancashire religious houses came Cokersand Abbey, founded in 1190 on a bit of seaside sandy wilderness about five miles south of Lancaster, near the estuary of the streamlet called the Coker. There is no reason to believe that the edifice was in any degree remarkable, in point either of extent or of architectural merit. Nothing now remains of it but the Chapter-house, an octagonal building thirty feet in diameter, the roof supported upon a solitary Anglo-Norman shaft, which leads up to the pointed arches of a groined ceiling. The oaken canopies of the stalls, when the building was dismantled, were removed, very properly, to the parish church of Lancaster.
Burscough Priory, two miles and a half north-east of Ormskirk, founded temp. Richard I., and for a long time the burial-place of the Earls of Derby, has suffered even more heavily than Cokersand Abbey. Nothing remains but a portion of the centre archway of the church. Burscough has interest, nevertheless, for the antiquary and the artist; the former of whom, though not the latter, finds pleasure also in the extant morsel of the ancient priory of Cartmel—a solitary gateway, standing almost due west of the church, close to the little river Ea, and containing some of the original windows, the trefoil mouldings of which appear to indicate the early part of the fourteenth century. The foundation of the edifice, as a whole, is referred to the year 1188, the name then given being "The Priory of the Blessed Mary of Kartmell." The demolition took place very shortly after the fatal 1535, when the church, much older, was also doomed, but spared as being the parochial one. Contemplating old Cartmel, one scarcely thinks of Shakspere, but it was to the "William Mareshall, Earl of Pembroke," in King John, that the Priory owed its birth.
Of Conishead Priory, two miles south of Ulverston, there are but atoms remaining, and these are concealed by the modern mansion which preserves the name. The memory of good deeds has more vitality than the work of the mason:—the monks of Conishead were entrusted with the safe conveyance of travellers across the treacherous sands at the outlet of the Leven; the Priory was also a hospital for the sick and maimed. Upholland Priory, near Wigan, dates from 1319, though a chantry existed there at a period still earlier. One of the lateral walls still exists, with a row of small windows, all covered with ivy. Some fragments of Penwortham Priory, near Preston, also remain; and lastly, for the curious there is the never-finished building called Lydiate Abbey, four miles south-west of Ormskirk, the date of which appears to be temp. Henry VIII., when the zeal of the Catholic founders received a sudden check. The walls are covered with ivy, "never sere," and the aspect in general is picturesque; so calmly and constantly always arises out of the calamities of the past nutriment for pleasure in the present.