Shap

Coaching Roads and High Ground

The Greyhound Hotel stands on the A6 where it has stood, in one form or another, since 1680. It is an 18th-century coaching inn, since renovated, and one of the survivors from the days when Shap was a staging post rather than a place you drive past. The bar looks out over the surrounding fells. From the door it is about twenty-five minutes on foot to Shap Abbey.

Shap sits high, on a limestone plateau east of the main Lake District fells, with Shap Fell rising to 1,328 feet above the village. This is open upland — moorland and dramatic country on the edge of the Eden Valley limestone, rather than the postcard lakes a few miles west. The weather up here has opinions.

The Road that Made Shap

The A6 that runs through the village used to be one of England's hardest main roads. Before the M6, the route over Shap Fell at 1,400 feet was the way to Scotland, and it was notorious for fog, ice and breakdowns. The village kept numerous coaching inns going to catch the traffic. Then the M6 opened through Shap in 1970, took the traffic away, and the village's economy declined sharply. The motorway and the West Coast Main Line both thread the Lune Gorge below the village, a stretch of ground engineers have been wrestling with for a long time.

Shap Abbey by the Lowther

The walking is the reason to be here. A mile west, along the River Lowther, are the ruins of Shap Abbey — free to visit, an English Heritage site, and one of the more remote and atmospheric monastic ruins in the country. It was a Premonstratensian house, founded near Kendal around 1190 and moved to Shap in 1199. It has one distinction that outlasts all the others: it was the last abbey in England dissolved by Henry VIII, surrendered on 14 January 1540. Most of what stands is 13th century; the tall west tower is early 16th. After the Dissolution the buildings were folded into a farm, which is why you approach the ruins along a farm track.

Stone Circles and Long-Distance Feet

There is older ground still. A short walk from the village brings you to Oddendale, a small stone circle that has survived intact. It is a fragment of something once enormous: the Shap Stone Avenue ran for nearly two miles northwest from the Kemp Howe circle, part of one of the largest megalithic complexes in Europe, comparable to Avebury before it was pulled apart. Most of the stones were broken up between the 17th and 19th centuries for building material — some of it, it is said, going into Shap Abbey, and later into houses. Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk passes straight through the village, so you may find yourself sharing the pavement with people who have walked a very long way.

A Village Beyond the Timetable

There is no station; the nearest is Penrith, ten miles north. But the fells were here first, and they will outlast the timetable.