The 12th century Haughmond Abbey sits on the outskirts of Shropshire and been in a ruinous state since the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid 16th century. The chapter house is the only section that survived with its late medieval ceiling intact, so is likely to have been the only part of the Abbey that had remained in domestic use over the last 400 years. Amazingly after the English civil war the site was primarily used for farmland for more than two centuries until its excavation in 1907 which eventually led to it falling under the permanent care of English Heritage.