224 Country Rambles. 



truth, not more to this once lonesome valley than to the 

 nation. The church, immensely venerable, portions of 

 it being Norman, is crowded with interesting antiquities, 

 and would itself well repay the journey, even were there 

 no Whalley Abbey alongside ; say rather the few portions 

 of the grand old pile that have been spared by Time, and 

 by that still heavier despoiler, man bent on destruction. 

 The abbey, founded in 1296, belonged to the Cistercians, 

 and, as usual with that fraternity, was dedicated to the 

 Virgin, whence the sacred monogram M still discover- 

 able upon some of the relics. Like all other abbeys, it 

 was for more than two hundred and forty years a place of 

 refuge for every one who needed succour or counsel. 

 Within its consecrated precincts there was always wisdom 

 to guide the inexperienced, and charity to relieve the 

 famishing and distressed. The dissolution of the monas- 

 teries in the calamitous year 1539 by a monarch who 

 thirsted less for reformation than for spoil, brought every- 

 thing to an end; and though the building itself was not 

 demolished till some time afterwards, the delay was less 

 designed than accidental. Eventually the very stones 

 were scattered far and wide; hence there is no identifying 

 the various portions as we do at Furness, and Fountains, 

 and Tintern, and Glastonbury, and Rievaulx. The 

 archaeologist conversant with monastic ruins is able to 

 trace them, but for the ordinary visitor, after the abbot's 

 house, long since modernised, and the two grand old 

 gateways, there are only a few grey and shattered walls, 

 some fragments of arches, and broken corridors. The 



