Furness Abbey - Romance, Scholarship and Culture by Christine Dade-Robertson, £11.50, Centre for North West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster

"I HAVE made a miserable botch of this description; it is no description but merely an attempt to preserve something of the impression it made on me, and in this I do not seem to have succeeded at all."

So wrote American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne after he visited the ruins of Furness Abbey in July, 1855 when it was already becoming a tourist attraction.

For anyone who has visited, or even driven past the Abbey, the romantic quality of the roofless ruins - which have endured for more than 460 years, 50 years longer than it was a monastery - remain virtually impossible to describe.

Miss Dade, who based her book on her recent dissertation for an MA in historical research, admits it is not an exhaustive study but based on material available to anyone with an interest in the decaying structures, which are "at once a presence and an absence."

At the time of the Dissolution in the early 16th century, Furness Abbey was the second wealthiest Cistercian site in England after Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.

It was founded when future king of England Stephen, Count of Boulogne, granted some land near Preston to the Benedictine Savignac order in 1123.

But the land was not considered suitable, so in 1127 the monks moved to Furness.

Twenty years later, the Savignac order was swallowed up by the more powerful Cistercians.

Chapter two explains how the ivy-clad ruins were reclaimed by the Romantic writers, artists and poets who were interested in their aesthetic qualities.

And in chapter three, the roles of the archaeologist, historian and architect are analysed as the 19th-century cult of Gothic saw designers trying to reproduce the work of the medieval masons.

During the 19th century, the Abbey was privately owned by the Cavendish family and by 1983 the site was in the guardianship of English Heritage when there was an attempt to foster public interest.

The book is beautifully illustrated with a 12-page colour section.

But nothing will demonstrate the impact the site can have on the visitor as much going there yourself and the book should certainly inspire you to make the effort.