March 1135 A.D. Wardon Abbey, Bedfordshire—Cistersian House; Wealthy; Bubonic Plague; Dissolved by Henry VIII
March
1135 A.D. Wardon
Abbey, Bedfordshire—Cistersian House;
Wealthy; Bubonic Plague;
Dissolved by Henry VIII
Contents
History
See also
Notes
Wardon or Warden Abbey, Bedfordshire,
was one of the senior Cistercian houses of England,
founded about 1135 from Rievaulx
Abbey.[1][2] It is a Grade
I listed
building.
Contents
History
The patron was Walter
Espec, who had founded the mother house and settled the new community on one of
his inherited estates, on unprofitable wasteland, as its early name, St Mary de
Sartis, implied,[3] just the kind of
remote, uninhabited sites specified by the founders of the Cistercian order.
The first abbot, Simon, was a pupil of Aeldred, Abbot of Rievaulx. The success
of the abbey may be inferred from the foundation of a daughter house, Sibton
Abbey, Suffolk, as soon as 1150.[4] The village of Old
Warden, Bedfordshire grew up under the Abbey's
protection. Great accumulated Cistercian wealth enabled Wardon Abbey to be
rebuilt on a grand scale in the early fourteenth century, with complex tiling
in carpet-patterns and pictorial vignettes pieced together in shaped tiles that
approached a boldly scaled mosaic.[5] Gilding of the carved
details was so lavishly laid on that in 1848, after demolition and burial,
recovered fragments retained their brightness.[6] By 1252 the monks had
more land under cultivation than they could work by their own labour in the
early Cistercian way: nineteen granges were recorded in that
year. From the orchards at Wardon came theWarden
pear, rated the best of English pears, and so
distinctive that a pie made from them was a "wardon pie": "I
must have Saffron to colour the Warden Pies" (Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale iv.3). In Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books,
edited by Thomas Austin for the Early English Text Society (Original Series,
Volume 91), a recipe is given (p. 51) for Quyncis or Wardouns in past.
The later fourteenth
century was a period of retrenchment and decline, in the wake of the Black
Death. Wardon Abbey was dissolved in 1537 under Henry VIII, and
the estate was sold for £389 16s 6d. The new owner demolished most of the
buildings in 1552 to sell the materials, and then built a new red brick
mansion, bearing the name Warden Abbey House. Later in 1790, the
remaining part of this Tudor house was pulled down by its owners, the
Whitbreads of nearby Southill,[7] leaving only a
north-east wing, which still stands today. The Landmark
Trust rescued
the building from dereliction in 1974 and renovated it in exchange for a long
lease; it can now be rented for holidays.[8]
See also
Notes
1.
Jump up^http://www.bedfordshire.gov.uk/CommunityAndLiving/ArchivesAndRecordOffice/CommunityArchives/OldWarden/WardenAbbey.aspx
3.
Jump up^ Evelyn
Baker, "Images, Ceramic Floors and Warden Abbey" World
Archaeology 18.3,
Archaeology and the Christian Church (February 1987:363-381).
4.
Jump up^ Documented
in Sibton Abbey Cartularies and Charters i-iv,
(Woodbridge: Suffolk Records Society) 1985-88, especially the Introduction, pt
i.
5.
Jump up^ "pseudo-mosaic"
in Baker 1987:365; Baker discusses remnants of richly stamped and incised tile
floors of the abbey church and the abbot's lodgings or infirmary, close in
style to the nearly intact paving in Prior Craudon's Chapel at Ely, 1324-25.
7.
Jump up^ Baker
1987:372, notes the extensive antiquarian excavations undertaken at Wardon
Abbey by W,H. Whitbread in the 1830s, of which none of the finds are now traceable.
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