Furness Abbey Hotel

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Not to be confused with Abbey House Hotel.

Photograph of the Furness Abbey Hotel, circa. 1850-1870

The Furness Abbey Hotel was demolished in 1953, having been bombed in May 1941. Its site now forms the car park to Furness Abbey and the museum. The station at Furness Abbey also suffered bomb damage and was demolished in the early 1950s. The original station booking office and refreshment room, built in 1862, which had been attached to the hotel survives as The Abbey Tavern, standing in Abbey Approach, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, to the north of the remains of Furness Abbey. The current structure is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.[1]

History[]

In the 17th century the whole site included the manor house for the Preston family, and probably incorporated the guest house of Furness Abbey.[2] By the 19th century the Prestons had left the house, and it remained empty until it was purchased by the Furness Railway in 1847.[3] The Lancaster architects Sharpe and Paley converted it into a hotel to accommodate visitors to the abbey. This contained 36 bedrooms and "only" three bathrooms.[4] The public rooms included an entrance hall and a reading and sitting room, both with stained glass windows, a billiard room, and a ballroom.[4] It was extended as part of an integrated plan in the 1860s -probably by E. G. Paley, to link it to the newly built Furness Abbey railway station.[2] In 1953–54 the main hotel building was demolished, leaving the northern wing of Paley's overall design, subsequently to become the Tavern.[5]

Architecture and assessment[]

The building, as it currently exists, is constructed in red sandstone with slate roofs. It is in two and three storeys. It "represents a fragment of a substantial hotel (sic) that served the Furness Railway".[1] The architectural historians Matthew Hyde and Nikolaus Pevsner comment that "it is a pity no more is left of so tantalising a building".[2] The Booking Office/ Refreshment Room (now the Abbey Tavern) was physically linked to the Furness Abbey Hotel, but had a separate and distinctive RAILWAY function. Like the hotel which had been built a little earlier, the building utilised stone elements salvaged from the Preston manor house, which itself had been built from stone taken from Furness Abbey after dissolution. This has sometimes led to the mistaken inference that the entire Abbey Tavern building was 'part of the hotel' or even 'part of the original manor house'. (viz: The Story of the Furness Abbey Hotel and Station, Youtube/the Yellow Factory.)

References[]

  1. ^ a b Historic England, "The Abbey Tavern, Barrow-in-Furness (1025255)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 29 May 2012
  2. ^ a b c Hyde, Matthew; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2010) [1967], Cumbria, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 359, ISBN 978-0-300-12663-1
  3. ^ Furness Abbey Hotel, Barrow-in-Furness Civic and Local History Society, retrieved 13 August 2011
  4. ^ a b Hughes, John M. (2010), Edmund Sharpe: Man of Lancaster, John M. Hughes, pp. 230–231
  5. ^ Brandwood, Geoff; Austin, Tim; Hughes, John; Price, James (2012), The Architecture of Sharpe, Paley and Austin, Swindon: English Heritage, p. 214, ISBN 978-1-84802-049-8

Coordinates: 54°08′15″N 3°11′55″W / 54.1375°N 3.1985°W / 54.1375; -3.1985

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