Rare Days!

 So much has been written about Furness Abbey (including our own Abbeywatch blog and many others like it, as well as the myriad of fantastic local history books), that I don't feel the need to add to the text just at the moment....


...but on rare days like today, why would you not just want to walk here?


    'There is a tranquillity to the place, a sense of lives lived out so that only their stories endure. Who will care about what happened to her? These huge slabs of crumbling sandstone will still be standing when her tale has become a small part of the history of this town. Seaview will be gone, and unborn people will weave new stories for their time. But she knows that the police will be back.'

Okay, that's a quote and shameless plug from my novel, Seaview House, but if you are writing a story with Barrow as it's setting, you have to include Furness Abbey, don't you? 



These photos were taken at eight o'clock this morning, with the first frost of the season still clinging to the shadows and the sun just cresting the ridges of the low fells.




Something I didn't know until recently was that Robert the Bruce stayed the night in the Abbott's house while he was traversing our country at the time of The Great Raid, in 1322. Substantial monies changed hands for lodgings and support apparently, rather than have the power and wealth of the abbey put at risk. Rather disloyal, I thought!




My third novel is set around this cottage. How could it not be? Whenever I walk past, and gaze at the tangled garden and blanked-out windows, I start to imagine what the story of the place is, or would be. That someone is living there is pretty obvious. My story is a kind of mystery/ romance with the main protagonist coming back to live in Tunnel Cottage after her world implodes. Let's hope it is published one day! For now, I'm happy enough to walk here, and dream...




























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