My dad’s a super silver surfer, he doesn’t just surf he makes too – and he’s recently rewritten (text and code) the website for the Friends of Dore Abbey.
It’s a very simple site – just seven pages that provide the basic detail on where to find Dore Abbey, its history and role today as the parish church of St Mary’s, plus photos of what’s there, details of services and events, and contacts.
It’s not the whizziest site you’ll have ever seen, but one of my dad’s objectives was to make it simple for any of the Friends to keep up to date, and another was to be self sufficient. Both achieved.
Dore Abbey was founded in 1147 by French Cistercian Monks from Morimond. Today it is the parish church of St Mary’s and as well as regular church services there are concert and choral events.
There are plenty of photos of Dore Abbey on Flickr, including these by a lady who’s also been to the beautiful north of Pakistan and along the Karakorum Highway!
Anyway, back to Dore Abbey. You will find it in the village of Abbey Dore in the heart of Herefordshire’s beautiful Golden Valley, about half way between Hereford and the Welsh border town of Abergavenny. It’s not far from Ross on Wye (antiques! kitchen kit!) or Hay on Wye (books! books! books!), and is in the shadow of the Black Mountains.
Next on his list is getting the site to come higher up in the Google search results; now there’s a black art….