This short film is an invitation to come to the Furness Abbey Fellowship’s annual medieval fair on 2nd September 2023.
The Furness Abbey Fellowship, FAF, is a small volunteer charity set up in 2012 to help promote the history and heritage of Furness Abbey in Cumbria, a Savigniac monastery founded in 1127. This volunteer group aims to support the work of English Heritage in preserving, interpreting and promoting this unique site. FAF organises small and larger scale events throughout the year to promote local and national awareness of the beauty and importance of Furness Abbey.
The largest of these events is the annual medieval fair, a whole day of activities in the abbey grounds in which the medieval period is brought back to life by living history groups who recreate all aspects of life between the 12th and 15th centuries. There are also local craftsmen and historians displaying their skills and archives and a range of stalls and refreshments. This is a great family day out.
'It's Our Abbey’ which is the title of the film, is a new book published in summer 2022 by The Furness Abbey Fellowship, written by Gill Jepson and Ron Creer and illustrated by Janet Pickering. This book tells the story of Furness Abbey from the researched and imagined point of view of the people who lived, worked and visited here during the almost 900 years of its history; monks, masons, abbots, antiquarians, railway workers, poets, writers, industrialists, archaeologists, historians, Victorian visitors and through to the living memory of school visits, Mystery/Passion plays, volunteers and English Heritage staff.