The Abbey Mill Café
At the southern end of Furness Abbey in Barrow-in-Furness, tucked into the Beckansgill Valley (AKA Valley of Nightshade), stands the Abbey Mill Café , a welcoming place for coffee, snacks, and excellent cakes.
Officially recorded as the Custodian’s Cottage, the building dates to the Victorian period and relates to the later management of the abbey ruins, not their medieval operation.
Yet its position beside Mill Beck, near what may once have been fishponds, has long prompted speculation. Changes in water flow, flooding, silt build-up, and railway construction reshaped this part of Cumbria over centuries. Earlier features may have been buried rather than removed.
There is no firm archaeological proof that this was once a medieval watermill.
What remains is possibility.
The Fiction
The Mereland Chronicles: The Crier is a historical mystery set in the medieval Lake District. When a monk shelters a young woman found on the tidal sands of Morecambe Bay, a single act of compassion begins to unravel his ordered life.
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Reader Reviews
Paul J. Scribbans — Author 