Ruined abbeys in London? We associate other areas with these sad monuments to perhaps the greatest act of vandalism perpetrated in British history: Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. Yorkshire, in particular has some wonderful examples like Rievaulx and Fountains. But London too has its own abbey ruins although clearly not on the scale of other parts of the British isles.
I can think of three examples here:
- Barking.
- Bermondsey
- Lesnes
On the other hand London has some fine examples of abbeys which are still continuing, either as whole or in part, as ecclesiastical buildings. Obviously Westminster abbey comes to mind; Britain’s supreme heart of all that is royal and of national importance. But there are others. In particular I love Saint Bartholomew the Great, Saint Helen’s Bishopsgate and Waltham Abbey. In addition there are new monasteries founded from the Victorian age. Ealing Abbey, belonging to the Benedictine order of monks, is one of these examples.
To return to London’s ruined abbeys. Why did that loathsome king destroy these beautiful buildings? Couldn’t he have adapted them for other uses instead of dismantling them stone by stone? Rather like the fanatics of Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant to see an abbey still standing could mean that it could again be used for its original purpose and if Islamic state fell or if the Papacy returned what then? That symbol of Papal hegemony or American imperialism must be destroyed at all costs…..
There are various degree of ruin. Sometimes, as with Tintern, enough of the abbey church survives to give a good idea of the grandeur of these buildings. Wordsworth was inspired by Tintern’s beauty to pen one of his greatest odes where he says that nature is “the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart and soul of all my moral beings”.
With Lesnes abbey the ruins give a scanty idea of the splendour of the original monastery. But the beauty of nature displayed in the woods that surround it and which in spring time are filled with a sea of wild daffodils more than make up for the paucity of the remains. It’s, however, not difficult to make out the abbey church’s extent since all its pier bases survive.
The cloisters and monastic accommodation also survive sufficiently to give one an idea of their magnitude.
Lesnes Abbey was founded by Richard de Luci Chief Justice of England in 1178 as an act of penance for his part in the murder of Saint Thomas a Becket in 1170. De Luci died in 1179 and is buried in the abbey’s chapter house. The abbot was instrumental in helping to drain the marshland edging the Thames which runs close by. Part of this survives around the fish-pond where the monks reared their finned companions to grace the refectory table especially on Fridays.
Excavations around 1910 uncovered the abbey remains and it became a park open to the public in 1931.
Although a rough idea may be had of its appearance there are many questions I would ask of how exactly Lesnes abbey looked like in its heigh-day. What kind of vaulting was used to cover its nave? What shrines and statues were contained in its interior? Did it have a bell-tower or a spire? Were the windows stained? How many pilgrims came to it? What scrolls and manuscripts were contained in its library?
These tantalising questions must be answered by one simple phrase: ‘all things must pass’. Even our own contemporary times are subject to this eternal law. What if we store our data on a mammoth memory chip containing all literature, all knowledge, all music, all art, all science, all architecture that we hold dear? Will a future archaeologist from this or any other planetary world of the universe have the facility to decode its contents? Will it all lie undeciphered like an archaic Etruscan script?
Ruins for me lead to these melancholic thoughts. They truly concentrate one’s attention on the ultimate insignificance of human existence itself.
However, Abbey Woods and its monastic ruins have been a very happy part of our lives ever since we discovered them many years ago. When still young we came across its Triassic sand beds and spent hours of fun searching for sharks’ teeth there. The Green Chain walk traverses the woods and it gave us an opportunity to fully appreciate nature in an urban environment, its changing seasons and its fauna and flora. The woods became truly our playground from the earliest days of our marriage,
A pilgrim carved from a dead tree trunk looks out towards the abbey ruins. Humanity, history and nature are contained within his figure. He stands, impassive with primaeval wisdom and arcane insight.
