Thorney Abbey

Thorney Abbey Church
Monastery information
Order	Benedictine
Established	972
Disestablished	1539
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade I listed building 1331263
Designated date	22 October 1952
Site
Location	Thorney, Cambridgeshire
Coordinates	52°37′13″N 0°06′26″W / 52.6204°N 0.1072°W
Website	thorneyabbey.co.uk

Thorney Abbey, now the Church of St Mary and St Botolph, was a medieval English Benedictine monastery at Thorney, Cambridgeshire in The Fens of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

History

The earliest documentary sources refer to a mid-7th century hermitage destroyed by a Viking incursion in the late 9th century. A Benedictine monastery was founded in the 970s, and a huge rebuilding programme followed the Norman Conquest of 1066. A new church was begun under the abbacy of Gunther of Le Mans, appointed in 1085. It was in use by 1089, but not entirely finished until 1108. Henry I was a benefactor of the abbey; a writ of his survives ordering the return of the manor of Sawbridge in Warwickshire to the abbey "and there is to be no complaint of injustice".

The focus of the settlement shifted away from the fen edge in the late 12th or early 13th century, the earlier site becoming a rubbish dump, perhaps because of encroaching water. It was reoccupied in the 13th and 14th centuries, when clay layers were laid down to provide a firm foundation for the timber buildings. More substantial buildings were erected in the 16th century and these are thought to have been part of an expanding abbey complex, perhaps for use as guesthouses, stables, or workshops.

Many of Thorney Abbey's buildings disappeared without trace after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Its last abbot, Robert Blythe, was a supporter of the King, having signed a letter to the pope urging that his divorce should be allowed. He was rewarded with a pension of £200 a year. The abbey was surrendered to the king's commissioners on 1 December 1539, and most its buildings were later demolished and the stone reused. The site was granted to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford in 1549/50.

The nave of the church survived, and was restored as the Parish Church of St Mary and St Botolph in 1638. At this date the aisles were demolished and the arcade openings walled up. Some stained glass was installed that possibly came from the Steelyard, the London trading base of the Hanseatic League. The present east end, in the Norman style, is by Edward Blore, and dates from 1840 to 1841. The church is a Grade I listed building.

There is a model of the monastery in the Thorney Museum.

The name Thorney Abbey is also given to a Grade I listed house, partly late sixteenth and partly seventeenth century, in the village of Thorney.

Burials

As a large abbey of Anglo-Saxon England a number of saints have been buried and venerated in Thorney, including:

• Athwulf of Thorney
• Benedict Biscop
• Botwulf of Thorney
• Cissa of Crowland
• Herefrith of Thorney
• Huna of Thorney
• Tancred of Thorney 9th century East Anglian martyr
• Torthred of Thorney brother of Tancred
• Tova
• Wihtred of Thorney
• Albinus of Thorney an Anglo-Saxon bishop and saint, buried in Thorney.

Excavation

Excavation was undertaken in 2002 prior to redevelopment, by University of Leicester Archaeological Services. This focused on the northern edge of the former island. As well as pottery, animal bone and roofing material, a large deposit of 13th and 14th century painted glass was found in and around the buildings. The intricate designs were of very high quality.

See also

• List of English abbeys, priories and friaries serving as parish churches

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Thorney Abbey — (i.e. "the isle of thorns", anciently called ANCARIG).

Thorney Abbey, in Cambridgeshire, England, was for some three centuries the seat of Saxon hermits, or of anchorites living in community, before it was refounded in 972 for Benedictine monks by Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, with the aid of King Edgar. The founder brought thither the body of St. Botulph and of other Saxon saints, including, possibly, St. Benet Biscop; and the church, originally dedicated to Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, became known thereafter as St. Mary and St. Botulph's. The structure built by Ethelwold stood for a century, and was replaced after the Norman Conquest by a new church 290 feet long, which was finished in 1108. The long series of charters granted to Thorney in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attests the prosperity of the abbey and the number of its benefactors. In Domesday Book its value is reckoned as equal to that of Peterborough; and William of Malmesbury describes it, in the reign of Henry II, as "an image of Paradise", and flourishing in all respects. Of the thirty-eight abbots whose names are recorded, the first was Godeman, and the last Robert Blyth, who was also Bishop of Down and Connor, in Ireland. Blyth and his community of nineteen monks surrendered the abbey to Henry VIII in 1539, receiving a pension in exchange. The buildings and most of the property were granted by Edward VI to John Earl of Bedford, whose family still owns them. The original Norman nave of five bays, with its perpendicular clerestory, remains, and is used as the parish church. The choir has disappeared, and the nave aisles were demolished in 1636, the material being used to fill up the nave arches. The west front, flanked by square turrets with octagonal terminations 100 feet high, and displaying an elaborate screen, with niches containing nine statues over the west window, is extremely picturesque.

DUGDALE, Monast. anglican., II (London, 1817), 593-613; TANNER, Notitia monastica: Cambridgeshire (Cambridge, 1787), xxvi; WILLIS, Hist. of Mitred Parliamentary Abbies, I (London, 1718), 187-191; WILLELM. MALMESB., De gestis pontificum, ed. HAMILTON (London, 1870), 326-329; GASQUET, The Greater Abbeys of England (London, 1908), 205-210.

Bibliography

• Thomas, J. (2006). Thorney Abbey discovered? Current Archaeology 204: 619

External links

• Parish of Thorney in the City of Peterborough
• Abbey of Thorney from VCH
• Thorney Abbey - Catholic Encyclopedia
• The Calendar and the Cloister, archived website dedicated to Oxford, St John's College MS 17, an early 12th-century manuscript produced at Thorney Abbey.