Rushen Abbey 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. This book aims to provide a synthesis of all the available evidence for Rushen Abbey under one cover.

The first account of the dissolution of the monasteries for fifty years—exploring its profound impact on the people of Tudor England “This is a book about people, though, not ideas, and as a detailed account of an extraordinary human drama with a cast of thousands, it is an exceptional piece of historical writing.”—Lucy Wooding, Times Literary Supplement Shortly before Easter, 1540 saw the end of almost a millennium of monastic life in England. Until then religious houses had acted as a focus for education, literary, and artistic expression and even the creation of regional and national identity. Their closure, carried out in just four years between 1536 and 1540, caused a dislocation of people and a disruption of life not seen in England since the Norman Conquest. Drawing on the records of national and regional archives as well as archaeological remains, James Clark explores the little-known lives of the last men and women who lived in England’s monasteries before the Reformation. Clark challenges received wisdom, showing that buildings were not immediately demolished and Henry VIII’s subjects were so attached to the religious houses that they kept fixtures and fittings as souvenirs. This rich, vivid history brings back into focus the prominent place of abbeys, priories, and friaries in the lives of the English people.

This volume provides a fascinating account of the natural forces which shaped the Island's landscape from its formation some 500 million years ago to the present nature of the Manx environment and landscape. The story of the island's colonisation by plants and animals sets the scene for the later volumes which deal with the impact of man's arrival. A key element of the volume is an in depth examination of the contemporary landscape, with an appraisal of how the environment has affected man and how man has affected the environment.

Volume 6 comprises the three southerly parishes of Kirk Malew (including the town and former capital Castletown and the large village of Ballasalla), Kirk Arbory, and Kirk Christ Rushen (including the Calf of Man island). The material appears in alphabetical form with discussion of any problems of interpretation, and a listing of the various elements making up the names. This volume yields name-forms and elements not found in Manx literature or dictionaries. In addition, reinterpretation of some of the names now places them in the Early Christian period of Manx history (6th-7th centuries), thus adding them to the small list of names predating the Scandinavian period (9th-13th centuries). As documentary material from that time to the 16th century is largely absent, the testimony of placenames is important for the distribution of name elements reflecting the topography and patterns of settlement, and for the development of Manx Gaelic during that period. It also helps to contribute towards comparative placename study in adjacent areas, particularly Ireland, southwest Scotland and northwest England.

By presenting case studies from across Eastern and Western Medieval Europe, this volume aims to open up a Europe-wide debate on the variety of relations and contexts between ecclesiastical buildings and their surrounding landscapes between the 5th and 15th centuries AD.

Work for the series »Placenames of the Isle of Man« is undertaken under the auspices of the Manx Place-Name Survey, set up at the University of Mannheim in 1988. The survey falls into two parts: material collected from a) oral, and b) documentary sources. Place-name material, mostly Manx Gaelic, for the first part, was collected on sound-recordings or in phonetic script 1989-1992 from some 200 informants, almost exclusively from the farming community. The second part contains material drawn from documentary sources of 13th-20th century date, but mostly from 17th-19th centuries. This is the final volume in the series »Placenames of the Isle of Man«. Six volumes, based on the Sheadings (districts) of Glenfaba, Michael, Ayre, Garff, Middle and Rushen, are already published. Volume 7 includes the town of Douglas (capital), place-name and field-name addenda, as well as complete indexes of place-name elements, place-names, field-names, and personal names. In addition are the following four articles: »Place-Names and the Physical and Human Geography of the Isle of Man: an Overview« (Peter Darvey), »Pre-Scandinavian Place-Names in the Isle of Man« (George Broderick), »The Scandinavian Element in the Place-Names of the Isle of Man« (Gillian Fellows-Jensen), and »Common Elements in Manx Place-Names« (George Broderick). To complete the volume are 17 parish maps containing the traditional land divisions of treen and quarterland.