Bourne Abbey - Monastic Origins

Monastic Origins

While the Domesday Book makes it clear that there was a church in Bourne in 1066 and there is a suggestion that there was an Anglo-Saxon abbey (see David Roffe's link below), as far as is firmly known, the abbey was founded as a monastic institution, by a charter granted in 1138, by Baldwin fitz Gilbert de Clare (with the consent of Roger his son and Adelina his wife). He was a member of a post-conquest Norman family, settled in Suffolk, which later made its mark in Wales and Ireland. Adelina was a great-granddaughter of Hereward the Wake, though the connection with the Wake family was not made until the generation after Baldwin and Adelina, when their daughter, Emma married Hugh Wake. The house was for up to 14 canons of the Arrouaisian reform of the Augustinian Rule. This was the height of the period of abbey foundation and castle-building in England.

The foundation of the abbey was part of a general restructuring of the estate so that the current town centre was built as a new town at the entrance to Baldwin's new castle. The new main road passed between Baldwin's new castle and the abbey. The pre-Norman road lies under the junction between the nave and the chancel. This proximity to the road may have influenced Baldwin's thinking when choosing an order for the new abbey. By this time, Arrouaise itself was moving away from being a hermitage towards providing a service for travellers.

In the late 13th century, the estate associated with Bourne Castle was reorganised so that the main road was moved onto what had been part of the site of the castle and a little away from the abbey.

The abbey was dissolved in 1536 along with the other small monastic houses, in the first phase of Henry VIII's suppression of monasteries.