How rarely I get north of Watford, let alone as far as Cumbria. It was only for a few days, but long enough to revisit the paradigm of topiary, Levens Hall, with its crazy toppling yews, and to discover the Holker (pronounced “Hooker’) estate on the remote peninsula of Furness. Furness has Morecambe Bay to the south, the Coniston Fells of the Lake District as a jagged frieze to the north, Barrow (where we build our submarines) to the west and not far off the vast ruins of Furness Abbey.
The Cistercians chose remote sites, but built with brio. Furness was founded by King Stephen, grandson of William the Conqueror, almost on the scale of Fountains Abbey, with a similar heart-breaking remnant of its soaring vaults and scarcely readable scraps of the monks’ quarters. It lies in a shallow green valley in the woods, a little river supplying all its plumbing. The stone is rusty red, the feeling of abandonment overwhelming. In places like this I still feel rising fury at the crimes of our most criminal king. Henry VIII stole or destroyed the culture of centuries, its greatest works of art and hundreds of its most educated souls. The evidence in abandoned foundations like this is not very much more than we have of Ancient Egypt. The shame hangs in the air.
Bare ruined choirs…
