Qualla: Calder Abbey

Calder Abbey: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 10 January 1134, Ranulph de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester, gave a site beside the River Calder and a working mill to twelve Savigniac monks under the abbot Gerold. They came from Furness Abbey on the south Cumbrian coast, built a wooden church, and settled in to pray and work the land. Four years later they were gone. The story of Calder Abbey, in the years that followed, is partly the story of a building that kept getting rebuilt and partly the story of monks who never quite gave up.

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Image: Humphrey Bolton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Calder Abbey: Driven Out, Twice

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Ledingham, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henry I died in 1135, and the years of political chaos that followed — known to historians as the Anarchy — left the northern English counties exposed. David I, King of Scots, sent raiders under William Fitz Duncan to harry Cumbria and Northumberland. Calder Abbey, only four year...

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Image: Simon Ledingham | CC BY-SA 2.0

Calder Abbey: The Second Founding

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Holmes, CC BY-SA 2.0. A new attempt at colonisation came in 1142, under Abbot Hardred, again from Furness — but this time with the protection of William Fitz Duncan, whose Scottish raiders had wrecked the first community. Politics in the borderlands moved like that. The Savigniac order was amalgamated...

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Image: John Holmes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Calder Abbey: The End of Monasteries

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. Scottish raids came again in 1216 and 1332. By 1381 the community was down to four monks and three lay brothers. At the Dissolution in 1535–36, the only recorded relic in the monastery's possession was a girdle — a belt — claimed to have belonged to the Virgin Mary. King Henry VI...

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain

Calder Abbey: What Remains

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Lord, CC BY-SA 2.0. Parts of the south and east claustral ranges were incorporated into Calder Abbey House, an early-nineteenth-century private residence built atop the medieval foundations. The rest of the abbey remains as a picturesque ruin — its 13th-century cruciform church, with aisleless presb...

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Image: John Lord | CC BY-SA 2.0