Ramsey Abbey


Ramsey Abbey was a Benedictine abbey in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, England. It was founded in AD 969 and dissolved on 22 November 1539.
The site of the abbey in Ramsey is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument. 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, where he had already built a wooden chapel for three monks. The foundation was part of the mid-10th century English Benedictine reform, in which Ely and Peterborough were also refounded. Æthelwine gave the new foundation properties including an estate at nearby Bodsey and Houghton Mill.

The important Ramsey Psalter or Psalter of Oswald is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter of the last quarter of the tenth century. 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, 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. 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.
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:

After the Dissolution

In 1540 the Crown sold the abbey lands to Sir Richard Williams. 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 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.
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.

Surviving buildings and artefacts

Ramsey Abbey House, the Gatehouse, and the parish church of St Thomas à Becket all survive, along with part of the abbey's medieval precinct wall.
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.
The Abbey Gatehouse is a National Trust property. This is believed to be an inner gatehouse, the main outer gatehouse was removed by Sir Henry Williams, the son and heir of Sir Richard, to form the main gateway to Hinchingbrooke House in Huntingdon, his newly built winter residence. Today what remains of the gatehouse also forms a part of the Abbey College.
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. The thurible, and an incense boat are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Also found in the bed were blocks of quarried stone, that are conjectured to have fallen from a barge on the way to the Abbey.

Burials

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