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A Description of the Scenery in the Lake District
A Description of the Scenery in the Lake District Author:William Ford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: uninviting. A sudden turn down the hill, on the top of which the traveller has been proceeding for a mile or two, presents the sweet smiling Holm of St. Mary. On... more » the right fine woods clothe the swelling ridges which die away in the meadows below, in the midst of which, rising from among majestic elms, are seen the venerable ruins of Lanercost Abbey, backed by the woods that slope down from the baronial castle of Naworth to the clear murmuring streams of the Irthing. LANERCOST ABBEY. The grey ruins of Lanercost, approached through the remains of a gateway, covered with ivy, stand a little distance from the Irthing on its northern banks, in the green holms of St. Mary. This monastery was founded in 1116, by Robert de Val- libus, for monks of the order of St. Augustine, chartered in the sixteenth year of Henry II., A.d. 1169, and dedicated by Bernard, Bishop of Carlisle, to Mary Magdalene. The church consists of a nave with north aisle, transepts with aisles east of them, used as monumental chapels, and choir. The western front is one of great beauty and simplicity ; a magnificent door, pointed and of many mouldings, fills the lowest compartment; above it runs a string of elegant niches, then seven long tall lancets fill the whole length of the front, having the alternate ones only pierced for lights; in the gable is a niche containing a statue of the Virgin and Child, and on each side, shields charged with the armorial cognizances of the abbey and the Dacres, and the top is crowned by the fragments of a beauteous cross. Thenave is fitted up as the parish church, and is lighted by a row of eight clerestory windows, these have the toothed ornament, the only kind used, which with the cornice that runs round the whole building give a rich appearance to the general plan of the e...« less