button to main menu   Ford's Description of the Lakes, 1839/1843

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Page 141:-
[de]dicated it to God and St. Mary Magdalene, endowing it for canons of the Premonstratensian order. Their revenues, at the dissolution, were £154 17s. 7d. The Abbey church appears to have been a large building. The great tower is the only part now standing, but extensive foundations of buildings were discovered in 1825, on the south side of the Abbey, near which the pillar of an ancient bridge is till to be seen in the midst of the river.
  Karl Lofts
Near the town of Shap is a stupendous monument, called Karl Lofts, composed of two lines of huge unhewn masses of granite, enclosing an area of half-a-mile in length, and from twenty to thirty yards in breadth, having at its south end a circle of similar stones, eighteen feet in diameter, and near the north end a square plot of stones, partly covered with earth, above which, on Skellaw Hill, is a small tumulus. The stones in each line are some of them three or four yards in diameter; but many of them have been blasted and carried away for the erection of buildings in the parish.
  Shap
The town of Shap, standing on the high road, has excellent inns; and not far from it, the Earl of Lonsdale has erected a commodious and elegant hotel, for the accommodation of visitors to the Wells, which have lately become a place of genteel resort. The high road, in return, passes through Thrimby and the pleasant village of Hackthorpe, to Penrith.
From Penrith the stranger can proceed by two
gazetteer links
button -- "Karl Lofts" -- Karl Lofts
button -- (Kemp Howe, Shap)
button -- "Shap Abbey" -- Shap Abbey
button -- Shap Wells Hotel
button -- "Shap" -- Shap
button -- Spa Well
button -- (tumulus, Skellaw Hill)
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