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Calder Abbey is a beautiful
ruin set in secluded private grounds beside the River Calder.
This is a quiet western dale that has the brooding presence of
the Sellafield nuclear complex at its seaward
end.
This very seclusion adds to the fascination
of the sandstone remains in the verdant Calder valley near Calderbridge.
The abbey ruins can be seen from a nearby road and a footpath by the
river but detailed exploration can only be made with the landowners
permission.
Calderbridge's retired vicar and acknowledged 'expert' on the Calder
Abbey, the Rev. Joe Johnson, who became to the local parish incumbent
in 1957.(Just weeks before all the atom plant workers suddenly evacuated
in buses as the 1957 fire broke out!)
He recalls the history of the abbey. *It was first founded in 1134 and
grew to be the driving force in the local community up until Henry the
Eighth dissolved the monasteries in 1536. Sir Thomas Leigh (a knight)
was the man sent by King Hal to turf out the monks and take over the
valuable farms and estates.
*The story goes that when the monks were booted out they went to Furness
Abbey but the Abbot there wouldn*t let them in unless they agreed to
the Calder Abbot being demoted. The monks would not agree to this and
so they trekked on to another monastery in Yorkshire.**
The Rev Johnson points out one of the many features of the Calder site:
*Half way to the village of Calderbridge is a stone called the Sanctuary
stone. If any criminal or man on the run reached that stone he could
claim sanctuary and safety.**
In more recent centuries Rev Johnson says the Senhouse family built
a large stately home, Abbey House, alongside and incorporating some
of the stonework from the old abbey in the eighteenth century.
*There is still a passage underneath the stately home that leads to
one of the original Monk*s cells.**
It is understood the abbey ruins and the stately splendour of Abbey
House were sold in the 1960s for the princely sum of £5,000 to
a buyer with landholdings from Cleator.(Burns Lindow estate)
*Dr Parker*s history of the Gosforth District devotes an entire chapter
to Calder Abbey.
The stone abbey was largely built in the years up to 1210 after an earlier
abbey had been wrecked by those marauding Scots in one of their many
Away Day visits to Cumbria!
Plans show that the abbey was laid out around a square cloister courtyard.
On the north side of these cloisters was the main church, complete with
a high church tower. The basic structure of this main tower has just
about survived the combined effects of yet another Scottish raid by
Robert Bruce (of Braveheart fame) in 1322 and generations of stone robbers.
The cloisters also had around them the complex of buildings that made
these early monasteries the main economic and cultural power houses
of England in the Dark Ages. The ruins include those of a library, refectory,
chapter house, dormitories and House of the Lay Brethren. There would
no doubt have been extensive gardens, rich salmon and trout fishing
in the Calder and almost limitless grazing for flocks of sheep. All
this controlled from the abbey, which King Henry decided was ripe for
a successful Take over bid.
Another hidden gem that is private and not open to the public is
Millom Castle in South Cumbria.
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