Monthly Archives: April 2017
Fountains abbey – small beginnings. #atozchallenge
Abbeys were often built in the middle of nowhere to ensure the temptations of town life were well away. Monks could then devote themselves to their offices while lay workers toiled to keep the money pouring in. However, it wasn’t always peaceful. In Yorkshire, at St Mary’s Abbey, at riot broke out in 1132 and […]
Ely’s lantern. #atozchallenge
Continuing my blogging theme of Abbeys and cathedrals… When visiting a cathedral, it’s important to look up. Quite often a cathedral will have mirrors on trolleys you can use to save craning your neck. Why? Because the roofs are amazing and my favourite looking up place is Ely. Ely is a city in East Anglia […]
Durham Cathedral and St. Cuthbert. #atozchallenge
Continuing my blogging theme of Abbeys and Cathedrals… Cuthbert was monk and spent some of his life at Lindisfarne in the kingdom of Northumbria (NE England) and is considered the saint of that region. Although, he was probably Scottish, not English. He became the bishop of Lindisfarne in 685AD, but gave it up to live […]
Cathedrals: the old, Canterbury, to the new, Coventry. #atozchallenge
There is a blurring of the lines between the great churches of abbeys and cathedrals. To me, as a visitor, they both offer the same experience and seem so akin as to be indistinguishable. However, it’s obviously more complicated than that. The word Cathedra is derived from the Latin word for chair. It is presence […]
Buckfast abbey – alive today #atozchallenge
I remember visiting Buckfast Abbey as a child. The stone looked clean and smooth. It isn’t a ruin. It’s very much alive and occupied. The original abbey was built in the reign of King Cnut in 1018 in Saxon times. A Benedictine monastery that continued for a few decades but by 1086 when the Doomesday […]
Abbeys – a long history. #atozchallenge
My first post is about abbeys. What is an abbey and what does it represent? Abbeys are a complex of buildings centred around a church devoted to a religious order and governed by an abbot or abbess, so they are synonymous with the establishment of monasteries and convents. An abbey is a home, a work […]
The Quiet Writer 