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Shap in Westmorland County England History and GeographySHAP, a parish in WEST ward, county of WESTMORLAND, 6 miles (N.W.) from Orton, containing, with portions of the chapelry of Mardale, of the township of Fawcet-Forest, and of the hamlet of Birbeck-Fells, 969 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Carlisle, rated in the king's books at £8. 15. 7½., endowed with £400 private benefaction, £600 royal bounty, and £1100 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, has lately received an addition of one hundred and ten free sittings, the Incorporated Society for the enlargement of churches and chapels having granted £50 towards defraying the expense. The river Lowther runs through the parish, which is bounded on the west by the lake Hawswater, and contains quarries of limestone and blue slate. In 1687, a charter was obtained for a market on Wednesday, and three fairs on April 23rd, August 1st, and September 17th, each for two days, but they have been long in disuse. At present a small market is held on Monday, and a fair for cattle and pedlary on May 4th. About one mile west from the town, which consists of a long straggling street, on the high road between Penrith and Kendal, are the venerable ruins and tolerably perfect tower of Shap abbey, founded about 1150, by Thomas Fitz-Gospatrick, in honour of God and St. Mary Magdalene, for Premonstratensian canons, whom he caused to be removed hither from an abbey which he had previously established at Preston in Kendal: at the dissolution it contained twenty monks, whose revenue was estimated at £166. 10. 6. Thomas Jackson, in 1703, gave a messuage and land for the erection and support of a school; the annual income is £25, for which about twenty children are instructed. In this parish is the site of a remarkable Druidical monument, or temple, upwards of half a mile in length, and from twenty to thirty yards in breadth: it is encompassed by huge masses of granite, many of them three or four yards in diameter, placed at irregular distances, having at the upper end a circus, or hippodrome, supposed to have been the place of sacrifice. Shap Well, the water of which is impregnated with sulphur, and serviceable in scorbutic cases, is within the adjoining parish of Crosby-Ravensworth. At Hardendale, in this parish, Dr. John Mill, the learned editor of the Greek Testament, was born, in 1645; he died in 1701. From Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1831, courtesy of Databases 4 Sale |
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