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Ramsey Abbey

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Ramsey Abbey
Remains of Ramsey Abbey Gatehouse
Remains of Ramsey Abbey Gatehouse
52°26′54″N 0°06′03″W / 52.44833°N 0.10083°W
Location Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, England
History
Founded 969
Built 10th–16th centuries
Demolished 1537
Site notes
Area Huntingdonshire
Scheduled monument
Official name Ramsey Abbey (remains of)
Reference no. 1006838

Ramsey Abbey was a Benedictine abbey in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire), England. It was founded about AD 969 and dissolved in 1539.

The site of the abbey in Ramsey is now a scheduled monument.[1] Most of the abbey's buildings were demolished after the dissolution but surviving structures are Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings. Ramsey Abbey Gatehouse is in the care of the National Trust and the Church of St Thomas à Becket, Ramsey was one of the buildings of the abbey.

The Abbey

Ramsey Abbey was founded in 969 by Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, on land donated by Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia (Earl Ailwyn), where he had already built a wooden chapel for three monks. The foundation was part of the mid-10th-century English Benedictine reform,[2] in which Ely and Peterborough were also refounded. Æthelwine gave the new foundation properties including an estate at nearby Bodsey and Houghton Mill.[3][4]

The Frankish scholar Abbo of Fleury came to Ramsey at Oswald's invitation during the period 985–7, when his fortunes at Fleury Abbey were at a low ebb. He wrote two surviving works for his students while he was there; the Passio S. Eadmundi and the questiones grammaticales.[5]

The important Ramsey Psalter or Psalter of Oswald (British Library, Harley MS 2904) is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter of the last quarter of the 10th century.[6] Certain liturgical features have suggested that it was intended for use at Ramsey Abbey, or for the personal use of Ramsey's founder Oswald of Worcester. This is not to be confused with another Ramsey Psalter in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (MS M. 302), made between 1286 and 1316.

Æthelwine at the suggestion of Oswald of Worcester founded a small hermitage for three hermits with a wooden chapel at a location indicated by the actions of a bull, on the island of Ramsey with impassible fen on three sides. Impressed by the story Oswald sent a prior, Germanus and twelve monks from Westbury-on-Trym to form the Abbey. Starting in 969, a large stone-built church was built over the next five years. Two towers stood up at the topmost points of the roofs, the smaller one at the front of the church towards the west, 'offered a beautiful sight from afar' to people coming to the island. The larger one, in the middle of a four-armed structure rested on four columns stabilised by connecting arches. This abbey building remained until a Norman abbot had a grander church built in the 12th century.

In 1143 Geoffrey de Mandeville expelled the monks, used the abbey as a fortress and considerably damaged the buildings. The abbey suffered for three centuries from disputes with the bishops of Ely over the manors of Chatteris and Somersham.[7] It paid 4,000 eels yearly to Peterborough Abbey for access to its quarries of limestone at Barnack.

In the order of precedence for abbots in Parliament, Ramsey was third after Glastonbury and St Alban's.[8]

The abbey was an international centre of Hebrew scholarship in the late Middle Ages. It prospered until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537. At the time of the Dissolution there were 34 monks.

In 1787 Mark Noble noted:[9]

The abbey of Ramsey, i.e. the Ram's isle, was one of the richest foundations in the kingdom: the abbot was mitred, and sat in the house of lords as baron of Broughton; the abbey had 387 hides of land, 200 of which were in Huntingdonshire: the monks were not famed for their liberality, if we believe the following ancient lines:

Crowland as courteous, as courteous as may bee,
Thorney the bane of many a good Tree,
Ramsey the rich, and Peterborough the proud,
Sawtry by the way that poor abbay,
Gave more almes than all they.

After the Dissolution

In 1540 the Crown sold the abbey lands to Sir Richard Williams (alias Cromwell).[8] He used most of the abbey buildings as a source of stone for walls and cottages at hand, and to provide good Barnack stone for new buildings. He had part of the abbey gatehouse dismantled and re-erected at Hinchingbrooke House. Much stone was taken to Cambridge to build Gonville and Caius, King's and Trinity colleges. Stone was taken for the tower for the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Godmanchester. This included a doorway from the abbey that was dismantled and re-erected as the west doorway of St Mary's. As late as 1672 stone for a new tower for Ramsey's own parish church of St Thomas à Becket was also taken from the Abbey.

Around 1600 Sir Henry Williams (alias Cromwell) had a house built on the site of the abbey church. Six bays of the 13th-century Lady Chapel survive as the basement of the house.[10]

In 1737 Coulson Fellowes, later MP for Huntingdonshire, bought the house. It passed down through several generations of the family. In 1804–06 William Henry Fellowes had the abbey house enlarged to designs by Sir John Soane. In 1889 his son Edward Fellowes was created 1st Baron de Ramsey. In 1931 at the coming of age of John Ailwyn Fellowes, 4th Baron de Ramsey, the family moved its seat to Abbots Ripton Hall. In 1937 the Fellowes leased the building for 99 years to Ramsey Abbey School. In 1952 Major The Hon. Henry Rogers Broughton gave the gatehouse to the National Trust in memory of his late wife The Hon. Diana Broughton (née Fellowes).[11]

Surviving buildings and artefacts

Ramsey Abbey House, the Gatehouse, and the parish church of St Thomas à Becket all survive,[12] along with part of the abbey's medieval precinct wall.[13]

Ramsey Abbey House, the former 17th-century home of Sir Henry Cromwell and latterly the seat of the Fellowes family, is currently part of Abbey College, Ramsey. The Bodsey monastic grange survives as the Grade-I listed Bodsey House.[14]

The Abbey Gatehouse is a National Trust property.[15] This is believed to be an inner gatehouse, the main outer gatehouse was removed by Sir Henry Williams (alias Cromwell), the son and heir of Sir Richard, to form the main gateway to Hinchingbrooke House in Huntingdon, his newly built winter residence.[16] Today what remains of the gatehouse also forms a part of the Abbey College.[17]

The Church of St Thomas à Becket, Ramsey was built in about 1180 or 1190 as either the hospitium or the infirmary of the abbey. It was originally an aisled hall with a chapel at the east end with a vestry on the north side and the warden's lodgings on the south, but both these have been demolished. The building was converted into a parish church in about 1222.

When Whittlesey Mere was drained, a thurible and other silver items were found in the bed of the mere and, from the ram's head on one of these pieces, were believed to have come from the Abbey.[18] The thurible (or censer),[19] and an incense boat[20] are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Also found in the bed were blocks of quarried stone,[21] that are conjectured to have fallen from a barge on the way to the Abbey.

Burials

  • St Felix of Burgundy, whose remains were publicly displayed as relics
  • Ivo of Ramsey, who gave his name to St Ives, Huntingdonshire

Abbots

The names of abbots from AD 993 onwards are known.[22] Notable among them are:

  • Eadnoth the Younger, who was also Bishop of Dorchester, and was killed at the Battle of Assandun in 1016
  • Aelfwine, abbot of Ramsey Abbey who witnessed the Accord of Winchester in 1072
  • Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich, who died in 1119
  • Reginald, commenced rebuilding of abbey in 1116[3]
  • Walter, abbot from 1133 to 1161, during the reign of Stephen and the invasion of Ramsey by Geoffrey de Mandeville, first Earl of Essex
  • Hugh de Sulgrave, 1254-67[3]
  • William de Godmanchester, 1276[3]
  • Simon de Eye, 1330[3]

Source discussion

Attribution

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Ramsey Abbey, Huntingdonshire, England, was founded by Ailwine (Ethelwine, Egelwine), a Saxon noble, in 969. He was encouraged in the undertaking by St. Oswald of York, who advised him that where men have renounced the world the air becomes salubrious, the fruits of the earth are gathered in abundance, famines and pestilence disappear, the State is duly governed, prisons are opened, and captives set free, those wrecked at sea are relieved, the sick are healed and the weak find means for their convalescence. The site chosen, Ramsey (Ram+eie, insula arietis), was then the largest and finest of the islands of a great marsh formed by the waters of the Ouse. It was afterwards connected with the mainland by a causeway constructed by the monks. Here Aednoth, nephew of Ailwine, commissioned by Oswald to make preparations, built a wooden church and offices, and as soon as all was ready, the saint sent twelve monks from his monastery of Westbury (Worcester) to take possession. The wooden minster was dedicated by Oswald and St. Dunstan of Canterbury to St. Mary, all Holy Virgins, and St. Benedict. Soon a fine stone church with towers was erected and consecrated by St. Oswald, Archbishop of York, assisted by Aescwio, Bishop of Dorchester, in 991. The year following (992) the two founders, Ailwine and Oswald, died, and the monastery, governed till then by priors (Germanus and Aednoth), was permitted to elect an abbot. Aednoth, son of Aednoth, the prior, was the first to hold office.

Ailwine handsomely endowed his foundation with lands and privileges. He also presented the new church with an altar-frontal (tabula in fronte eminentioris altaris) of wood, covered with silver plates and many-coloured jewels. King Edgar, Henry I, Henry II, and others extended and confirmed the possessions and liberties. In 1002 the body of St. Ives (Ivo) was miraculously discovered in the neighbourhood and this led to the establishment of the dependent priory of St. Ives. Another dependent priory or cell was Modney, in Norfolk. The abbot had a seat in Parliament and ranked next after Glastonbury and St. Alban's. At the Dissolution (1539) John Wardeboys, alias Lawrence, willingly resigned the abbey into the king's hands and received a pension of £266. 13s. 4d. per annum. The estates were granted by Henry VIII to Sir Richard Williams, alias Cromwell. The revenue, according to Dugdale, was £1716. 12s. 4d., but according to Speed, £983. 15s. 3 1/4 d. Nothing important remains of the buildings but a ruined Late Gothic gateway.

Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis in Rolls Series (1886); Cartularium Monasterii de Ramsesia in Rolls Series (3 vols.); DUGDALE, Monasticon Anglicanum, II (London, 1846); REYNER, Apostolatus Benedictinorum, 149; WISE, Ramsey Abbey, its rise and fall, (1881).

References

  1. Back to citation Historic England. "Ramsey Abbey (remains of) (1006838)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  2. Back to citation Brooks, N. P. (2004). "Oswald [St Oswald]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20917. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Back to citation occurrence 3.2 Back to citation occurrence 3.3 Back to citation occurrence 3.4 Page, WH; Proby, Granville, eds. (1926). A History of the County of Huntingdon. Victoria County History. Vol. 1. London: St Catherine Press. pp. 377–385.
  4. Back to citation Page, WH; Proby, Granville, eds. (1932). A History of the County of Huntingdon. Victoria County History. Vol. 1. London: St Catherine Press. pp. 178–81.
  5. Back to citation Greenfield, Stanley B. (1986). A new critical history of Old English literature. Calder, Daniel Gillmore., Lapidge, Michael. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3855-9. OCLC 805494651.
  6. Back to citation Brown, 119
  7. Back to citation "Houses of Benedictine monks: The abbey of Ramsey." A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 1. Eds. William Page, Granville Proby, and H E Norris. London: Victoria County History, 1926. 377-385. British History Online. Retrieved 14 May 2019. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol1/pp377-385.
  8. Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1911). "Ramsey Abbey". Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  9. Back to citation Noble 1787, pp. 18, 19.
  10. Back to citation Historic England. "Ramsey Abbey School (Grade I) (1156544)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  11. Back to citation "Fellowes Family". History of Ramsey abbey. Clive Beeke. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  12. Back to citation "Ramsey Town". ramseytown.com. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008.
  13. Back to citation Historic England. "Precinct wall running along the eastern and southern side of Church Green, along the eastern and southern side of Abbey Green, and along the eastern side of Hollow Lane (Grade II*) (1130265)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  14. Back to citation Historic England. "Bodsey House, Ramsey (Grade I) (1166717)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  15. Back to citation "Ramsey Abbey Gatehouse". nationaltrust.org.uk.
  16. Back to citation "About Hinchingbrooke House". Hinchingbrooke House and Performing Arts Centre.
  17. Back to citation The new establishment Abbey College, Ramsey was formed from the amalgamation of Ramsey Abbey School with the adjacent Ailwyn School and has been operational from September 2006, leaving the previous two names defunct.
  18. Back to citation "The Ramsey Abbey Censer". History of Ramsey Abbey. Clive Beeke.
  19. Back to citation "The Ramsey Abbey Censer". Collections. Victoria and Albert Museum. 25 March 2024.
  20. Back to citation "The Ramsey Abbey Incense Boat". Collections. Victoria and Albert Museum. 25 March 2024.
  21. Back to citation "Ramsey Abbey Stones". Yaxley History. 12 October 2012.
  22. Back to citation "Abbots of Ramsey". History of Ramsey Abbey. Clive Beeke. Retrieved 27 June 2017.

Further reading

  • Lapidge, Michael, ed. (2009). "Ramsey in the Time of Byrhtferth". Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. xv–xxix. ISBN 978-0-19-955078-4.
  • Pevsner, Nikolaus (1968). Bedfordshire and the County of Huntingdon and Peterborough. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 330–334. ISBN 0-14-0710-34-5.
  • RCHME, ed. (1926). An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Huntingdonshire. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 204–211.
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