Abbotsbury project for very Young Artists
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St. Catherine’s Chapel, was some say, built by the monks, to hold a finger of St. Catherine. The Chapel was visited by pilgrims, who used to pray to the Saint, St.Catherine, believing that her finger, a piece of the Saint, was a link to God.
The Chapel on the hill overlooking the sea, was a beacon for ships, a fixed point and a warning in storms and rough seas.
The unusual form of the Chesil bank and the Fleet Lagoon make an ideal place for the gathering of many swans. The monks would encourage and feed the nesting swans as they were a source of swan meat, good food worthy of a feast in the middle ages.
The Lagoon, being dead straight for 8 miles, was used in the world war for the Dam Buster Lancaster Bombers to test their bombs bouncing along the water, bouncing on the water like skimming flat pebbles.
The biggest Swannery in Europe, where hundreds of swans their make nests and bring up their signets.
Swans migrate to the Abbotsbury Swannery from distant places, some fly in from thousands of miles away, among other places like Eastern Siberia near China.
The Sub-Tropical Garden is a special place containing exotic plants and trees from all over the world where scholars can study these unusual natural things. The exotic plants benefit from Abbotsbury’s mild coastal weather.
The biggest Thatched Barn in the world where the medieval farmers would bring their harvested crops as offerings to the Abbey landlords.
Abbotsbury is a village by the sea having a church with a tower and medieval stone cottages, with thatched and slate roofs, nestling amongst rolling green hills
There was a tsunami wave in 1824 that crashed over the Chesil Bank and drowned the village of Fleet.
On the orders of King Henry VIII Abbotsbury’s Grand Church, St. Peter’s Abbey was smashed and destroyed by his followers, leaving only ruins behind.
