Syon Monastery - Background

Background

Syon Monastery was built as part of King Henry V's “The King's Great Work” centred on Sheen Palace (renamed Richmond Palace in 1501). The royal manor of Sheen lay on the right (south), Surrey, bank of the River Thames, opposite the parish of Twickenham and the royal manor of Isleworth on the left, Middlesex, bank. Sheen had been a favourite residence of the last Plantagenet king Richard II (1377–1399) and his beloved wife Anne of Bohemia. When Anne died there of plague in 1394, Richard cursed the place where they had found great happiness and razed the palace to the ground. His throne was usurped by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who ruled as Henry IV(1399–1413). Henry IV had been involved in the murder of Richard in 1400, and in that of Archbishop Richard le Scrope, and made a vow to expiate his guilt by founding 3 monasteries, which vow he died before fulfilling. Whilst Henry IV had shown little interest in the ruined Sheen, his son Henry V(1413–1422) saw its reconstruction as a means of emphasising the dynastic link between his own House of Lancaster and that of Plantagenet, of unquestioned legitimacy, and decided at the same time to found the 3 monasteries pledged by his father all within one great building scheme, known as “The King's Great Work”. Thus the “Great Work” commenced in the winter of 1413-14, comprising the new Sheen Palace, and nearby the following 3 monasteries:

• A Monastery of the Celestine Order. Established probably in Isleworth Manor. This monastery was of French monks, who refused to pray for Henry V following his warring with France, probably at Agincourt in 1415, and was therefore dissolved by the King almost immediately after its foundation. This monastery probably occupied the site in Isleworth to which Syon Monastery moved in 1431.
• The House of Jesus of Bethlehem of Sheen, of the Order of Carthusians (1414) Sheen Priory. Built within Sheen Manor, to the north of the new palace.
• The Monastery of St Saviour and St Bridget of Syon, of the Order of St Augustine (1415) Syon Monastery, the subject of this article . The first and original site of this monastery was probably almost due west of Sheen Palace, across the river, on the left bank of the Thames in Twickenham Parish.