Furness Abbey 2017
The following is a students account of a visit to the Furness Abbey – May 2017
As part of our History Site Study we planned a visit to Furness Abbey. We were able to visit the extraordinary remains of an abbey founded by Stephen, later King of England, including looking through the standing rooms of the east end and west tower of the church, the ornately decorated chapter house and the cloister buildings.
At the moment there is some emergency conservation work taking place which means that there is quite a lot of scaffolding up to stop the ruined Abbey church sinking into the soft ground. The Medieval stone masons used large pieces of oak in the foundations felled from the trees in the surrounding woods and now 500 years later, this timber is now gradually giving way.
In the museum we were able to see the first crozier (a staff with a crook on top) to be excavated in Britain in over 50 years and an impressive gemstone ring which was found on an abbot that they excavated in 2010.