My first published Waymark

St Catherine's Church

known locally as Lydiate Abbey

WM74DD

We visited this whilst caching in Lancashire and thought it was such a lovely place it was a shame that it was not a waymark as well. I came home and checked waymarking.com and sure enough it wasn't there so armed with all the information which I had collected I set about making sure that this was published.

My first attempt was rejected as I had used the wrong category for the church so had to resubmit this into the Medieval Church category. Only 8 hours later the WM was published.

St Catherine's Church is also known as Lydiate Abbey. It is believed to have been built c1500 and abandoned about 50 years later. Only the ruins of the abbey exist today.It is 1 of only 2 surviving private chapels in South West Lancashire and it is now a grade II listed building and scheduled monument and is included in the Lydiate Hall and Chapel Conservation area.
Lydiate Abbey was built for the private worship of the Ireland family, Lords of the Manor of Lydiate from c1410 - 1673

Initials of Lawrence Ireland and his wife, Catherine Blundell can be found on the porch of the abbey. Ireland Family were very influential in the area in the 15th century and Lydiate Hall was built sometime around 1470. The eastern part of the Hall was destroyed about 1780, and the Hall was abandoned completely by the late 1800s. Only ruins exist today.

The abbey appears to have been abandoned when the practice of the Catholic religion was prohibited. Local legend holds that a tunnel exists between the Abbey and the Hall to allow the escape of a priest. Another local legend states that the tunnel was between the Abbey and the Scotch Piper pub (now a grade 2 listed building)in order to allow monks to escape the public house. However, there is no documented evidence of this. The adjacent graveyard was used by local Catholic families into the later 1800s.