Shap Abbey

Today's the day ....................... to make a detour

When we're heading north, we often stop for a coffee in the Abbey Café in Shap  We were in there today and began to wonder why we had never been to Shap Abbey from which it gets its name.  We decided to make a quick detour to see what it was like.

And it was a very impressive building - or at least it was easy to imagine how impressive it would have been before Henry VIII did his dissolution thing.  The abbey was founded in about 1200 by a local baron called Thomas, son of Gospatric, who granted the community of Premonstratensian canons land beside the River Lowther.  This order wore white habits like the Cistercians and built their monasteries in remote places.  They lived a contemplative monastic life and served as priests in nearby parishes.

The imposing west tower of the abbey church was built around 1500 and is still standing to almost its full height.  It was most probably commissioned by Abbot Redman who might have employed the same masons who built the towers at the Cistercian abbeys of Fountains and Furness .....................