Rushen Abbey, Isle of Man: A Hundred Years of Research and Excavation

Rushen Abbey, now owned and managed by Manx National Heritage, was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1134 and suppressed in 1540.It was the most important religious institution on the Isle of Man wielding significant secular power as well as ecclesiastical authority.Its location in the middle of the Irish Sea and its political connections made it one of the most influential houses in western Britain and Ireland. The first known excavations were carried out in the late 1890s by Deemster Gill, one of the most senior law officers on the island.They were followed in 1912 and again in 1926 by more extensive investigations of parts of the east range the north transept of the church by William Cubbon then owner of the site.The modern study of the site began in 1978 and 1979 with excavations of the presbytery and both transepts by Dr Lawrence Butler, who followed them in 1988 and 1989 with a complete exploration of the east range.In between these two programmes of work Dr Larch Garrad of the M