Kent and the Abbey of Cluny (founded 910)

2010 is the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny, which was to have an influence on monasticism throughout Europe. The KAS Churches Committee are commemorating that event with this article.

The abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Cluny in Burgundy was founded in 910 by William I, the ‘Pious’ Duke of Aquitaine and count of Auvergne and, although then fairly modest in size, it was destined to become the most influential monastic house of the early medieval period. William did not impose the usual obligations on its patron, such as installing members of his family as abbots, but only required that prayers be said for him and his family. This paved the way for what became known as the Cluniac Reforms. Cluny was founded as a Benedictine house but it differed in key ways from other Benedictine monasteries: its organisational structure, by not holding land by feudal service and by making worship and prayer its main occupation. Other monasteries were more like manors and brothers formed an important part of the workforce. Cluny was responsible only to the papacy, which was itself weak in the ninth and tenth centuries allowing the opportunity to establish its position.

Cluny created a federation of monasteries which spread in all directions from Burgundy. Because Duke Richard II of Normandy used Cluniac priors to revitalise the church in Normandy at the beginning of the eleventh century, Cluniac houses were established in England after the Norman Conquest. Some of these were independent abbeys with links to Cluny and some were priories subordinate to the abbey of Cluny. The abbeys included Bermondsey, Reading and Faversham. There were a number of important Cluniac priories in England, such as Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk, St Pancras Priory at Lewes in Sussex and Montacute Priory in Somerset.

In Kent in 1147, King Stephen donated his manor of Faversham for the foundation of an abbey there ‘of the Order of the monks at Cluny.’¹ It was dedicated to St Saviour and always maintained its independence even though it was populated with Cluniac monks. King Stephen, Queen Matilda and their son Eustace were buried in the Abbey church but their bones were removed at the time of the Dissolution (1538). Sadly, scarcely anything survives of this once very large abbey and, of that, nothing of the abbey church (smaller than Canterbury Cathedral but bigger than Rochester Cathedral). It is fortunate that an extensive and well-documented excavation started on New Year’s Eve 1964 before the abbey site was redeveloped.² There were many finds of building materials, floor-tiles, painted plaster and stonework, window glass (none inside the church, implying that the glass was salvaged after 1538), human skeletal material and pottery.

King Stephen with Faversham Abbey

Faversham was a thriving port and important centre in the Saxon period and Faversham Creek may have been considered strategic for the defence of the area. The first abbot was Clarembold, prior of Bermondsey Abbey. He arrived in 1148 with 12 monks. They stayed at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury during the construction of St Saviour, but the work was sufficiently advanced in 1152 for Queen Matilda to be buried there. Prince Eustace, who drowned in a notorious accident, the ‘White Ship Disaster’ off Normandy, followed her in 1153 and King Stephen only a year after that. Repairs were carried out by his successors, but the abbey never fully recovered from the damage of the fourteenth century and subsequent neglect. In the early fifteenth century Archbishop Courtenay of Canterbury ordered an inspection of the Abbey, and later Archbishops also sought to enforce the discipline of Cluny. The visitation of Archbishop Morton in 1486 described it as ‘in some parts ruinous’.

Faversham Abbey finally succumbed to the Dissolution and was closed in 1538.

Notes:

1. W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. VI, p. 1113
2. J. S. Boyden, ‘Faversham Abbey Excavations’, Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. 80 (1965)

were necessary as soon as 1178. Various manors and other sources of income were granted to the abbey until shortly before it was suppressed in 1538 and in March 1540 it was granted to Sir Thomas Cheney, warden of the Cinque Ports. Much of the stone from the site is believed to have been used to strengthen the fortifications at Calais.

The other Cluniac house in Kent was the Priory of St John the Evangelist at Horton, a dependency of Lewes Priory, in turn subordinate to Cluny itself. Horton Priory was established around 1140 by Robert de Vere and his wife, Adeline. It seems likely that Robert was a member of the family of that name in Ver-sur-mer in the Bessin rather than Aubrey de Vere, Count of Guines who was made Earl of Oxford in 1141 by Matilda, whose family came from Vern-sur-Seiche. Robert de Vere acquired his Kent lands in marriage to Robert de Montfort’s sister in 1119. The manors of Horton and Tinton and the churches of Brabourne nearby, Purleigh in Essex and Stanstead in Suffolk were granted to the priory by the founders.³ In 1275-6, there were 11 monks at Horton, two fewer than the ‘proper’ number; three years later there were 13. In 1279, the priory was said to be in good order with a new roof and extended cloister, however, in 1314 members of an official inspection team (‘visitation’) reported that the Prior was not fulfilling his obligations. As a Cluniac house, Horton was considered to be an alien priory (i.e. French) and during the wars with France it was frequently taken over by the English king until Lewes Priory, with its dependent priories, was declared to be English in 1373. Horton Priory was dissolved in 1536 and has been in private hands since then.

The tantalising few fragments that remain of the 12th century architecture at the south-west corner of the west front reveal that it was a high-quality building with good decoration in Caen stone.⁴ The church and other buildings were taken down soon after the dissolution and the stone used elsewhere. There is some evidence of Norman and later medieval work in the remaining western range of buildings, originally the prior’s quarters, and this section was converted into a farmhouse. In 1913, the priory was bought by American owners who commissioned George Hornblower to create a stylish country house for them. That house remained in the same family until 1998 when new owners turned it into a house for 21st century living while, with advice from English Heritage, retaining its best features. As this is written, the priory is on the market.

Cluny itself was, of course, not dissolved in the 16th century, but as a result of the various wars of religion in the 14th century and the extravagant life-style adopted by the monks in 15th century, the right to appoint abbots of Cluny was granted to the king of France. This link ensured that it was destroyed in the wake of the French Revolution. Its archives were burned in 1793 and the church and cloistral buildings sold as a stone quarry. Less than 10% survives of what was once the largest church in Christendom before the completion of (the new) St Peter’s in Rome in 1606.

Horton Priory; the south-west corner of the west front

Mary Berg
See www.cluny2010.eu for a list of events planned this summer to celebrate 1100 years since Cluny’s foundation.

¹ see illustration - Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum (London, British Library, MS Royal 14.C.VII, folio 6r)

² Philip, B., Excavations at Faversham, 1965 (Kent Archaeological Research Group, 1968)

³ Victoria County History, Kent, vol.2, p.151-3

⁴ Archaeologia Cantiana, 10 (1876), Monks Horton Priory, Charles Baily, Esq., Architect