Conishead Priory.

CONISHEAD PRIORY .

BY W . M . BEAITHWAITE . A GRAND old place is Conishead Priory , as it nestles amid its charming woods and gardens , overlooking a wide expanse of Morecambe Bay , whose golden sands sparkle and glisten in the sunlight , while the Levens and Crake Rivers- —outlets of Windermere and Coniston Lakes—joined in one

broad stream , glide silently down their midst . It is a scene of almost fairy enchantment ; for one may stand in either of the minarets which flank its entrance , and gaze away northward to the Furness Fells , amid which Coniston " Old Man " stands out prominent , or we may look eastward and see the evervarying , ever-shifting shadows which flit across the blue Yorkshire mountains , embracing Pennygaut and Ingleboro ' . If we turn our gaze a little to the

south , we see nestling almost at our feet the neat little village of Bardsea , with its Gothic church and clean whitewashed houses . And all around us we find a magnificent forest of trees—gigantic oaks , the growth of ages , and pine trees of enormous height , the branches of which sway in the breeze and make a melody alike delicious to the ears and heart . It is in a place like this that we can truly appreciate the words of Felicia Hemans , when she

says—The stately homes of England , How beautiful they stand Amid their tall ancestral trees O ' er all the pleasant land . The deer across their greensward bound ,

Through shade and sunny gleam ; And the swan glides past them with the sound Of some rejoicing stream . Had the gifted authoress ever visited Conishead , she might in very deed have written these words in praise of it , for the deer range wild in its parks and the swan glides along the placid waters of the fish-pond , glimpses of which may be seen through the trees .

Conishead traces its name back to the realms of antiquity . Originally it was known as Coningheved , which is supposed to indicate the place where a British king had been interred . Afterwards it was used as a boundary mark by the Saxons , and was called the Cyning , or Conyings , or King ' s Head . Similarly the term occurs in Conistone , where a stone erected over the grave of a British chief , or a place where he administered judgment , is called

Cyning , or Oonyngstone , which in course of time became abbreviated to Coniston . The neighbouring village which I have mentioned was called Bertesig—the . ancient British for a " place of thickets or coppice , " as written in the Doomsday Survey , and was ultimately softened b y the Normans to Berdesey . Conishead Priory was established as a sort of relief to the neihbouring

g Abbey of St . Mary ' s of Furness . It was founded b y William de Taillebois , Baron of Kendal , who took the name of Lancaster , and gave the charge thereof to the canons regular of the order of St . Augustine , for the relief of the poor , the decrepit , indigent , and lepers , in the environs of Ulverstone . The endowments and grants to this priory I have translated from Dugdale ' s " Monasticon Anglicanum , " p . 424 :

" King Edward II . confirmed to this priory whatever had been granted to them from Wm . de Lancaster , all Coningesheved ( that is to say Conishead ) and all the land belonging to the said house which William de Lancaster had