ANCIENT PRIORY RUINS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 18 July 1929, Page 2

ANCIENT PRIORY RUINS

TWELFTH CENTURY RELIC PRESERVATION MEASURES The Ofiice of Works at Edinburgh has announced that work to explore and preserve the ruins of Lanercost Abbey—or Priory, as it, should more strictly be called—in North Cumberland will be started shortly. Photographs and measurement s have already been taken. Lanercost Priory was presented by Lndv Cecilia Roberts to the nation. The priory, which was founded in the twelfth century, belonged to tins Black Friars of the Augnstinian Order —Austin Friars, as the English name generally ran—and is situated near Naworth Castle, the Cumberland seat of the Earl of Carlisle. Both before and after the Dissolution of Iho monasteries, the building was a refuge from Scotsmen raiding over the Border, though on one occasion Robert the Bruce stormed the place and carried away some of the treasures and sculptures. If is believed that the excavations will reveal the foundations of an ancient Saxon church existing on the same site before the erection of the monastery, as in the ease of Hexham Abbey, thirty miles away. Both Hexham and Lanercost, lie in the line of the Emperor Hadrian's Wall across Northern Britain from ihe Solway to the Tyne. The Saxon church would probably be built from stones taken from the Wall, as has been proved to be the case at Hexham, and also at Kirkbride Church, which lies on the Solway coast near the western extremity of the Wall. 'the vicar of Lanercost, the Rev. A. P. Durrani, lias expressed some anxiety lest the. mills should he. merely tidied up and their character destroyed by such methods as scrubbing the masonry with steel brushes, but the Ofiice of Works, it is understood, strictly forbids the use. of steel brushes and takes meticulous care of ancient stones committed to its charge. The department works in harmony with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings.