Downside Abbey

The Basilica of St Gregory the Great at Downside, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is a Benedictine monastery in England and the senior community of the English Benedictine Congregation. Its main apostolate is the Downside School , for the education of children aged eleven to eighteen.

Both the abbey and the school are located at Stratton-on-the-Fosse between Westfield and Shepton Mallet in Somerset, South West England. In 2017, the abbey was home to fourteen monks.

Downside Abbey has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described the Abbey as "the most splendid demonstration of the renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England".

History

The community was founded in 1607 at Douai in Flanders under the patronage of St Gregory the Great (who had sent the monk, St Augustine of Canterbury, as head of a mission to England in 597). The founder was the Welshman St John Roberts, who became the first prior and established the new community with other monks from Britain who had entered various monasteries within the Spanish Benedictine Congregation, notably the principal monastery at Valladolid . In 1611 Dom Philippe de Caverel, abbot of St. Vaast's Abbey at Arras , built and endowed a monastery for the community.

The Priory of St Gregory was therefore the first English Benedictine house to renew conventual life after the Reformation. For nearly 200 years the monastery trained monks for the English mission^.

French troops invaded Flanders during the French Revolution. The monastic community was expelled by them, after a period of imprisonment, and in March 1795 the community was permitted to proceed to England. They settled for some 20 years as guests of Sir Edward Smythe at Acton Burnell , Shropshire, before finally settling at Mount Pleasant, Downside, in Somerset, in 1814.

The monastery was completed in 1876. Downside was granted Abbey status in October 1899 (with Ampleforth and Douai) and Prior Edmund Ford was elected the first Abbot in 1900.

Abbey church

The building of Downside abbey church was begun in 1873 with the transepts and the Lady Chapel. The foundation stone was laid on 1 October 1873.

In 1925 the unfinished nave was dedicated to those old boys of the school killed in World War I.

The abbey church was consecrated in 1935. At the same time it was raised to the rank of a minor basilica by Pope Pius XI . The consecration was reported in the Wells Journal for 13 September 1935.

The church houses the relics of St. Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, an Irish martyr, executed at Tyburn in 1681, who entrusted the disposal of his body to the care of a Benedictine monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. The church is one of only four in the United Kingdom to be designated a minor basilica by the Roman Catholic Church.

The church is built in the Gothic Revival style, and is designed to rival in size the medieval cathedrals of England that were lost to the Catholic Church through the Reformation. The earliest part is the decorated transepts by Archibald Matthias Dunn and Edward Joseph Hansom, dating from 1882. The choir is the work of Thomas Garner (who is buried there), dedicated in 1905. The nave by Giles Gilbert Scott (c. 1923–25) remains unfinished, with its western wall in crude Lias stone standing bare and undecorated. The Lady chapel is acknowledged as one of the most complete and successful schemes of Sir Ninian Comper, with a reredos and altar furnishings incorporating medieval fragments and a reliquary containing the skull of St Thomas de Cantilupe. The tower, completed in 1938, at 166 feet (55 m), is the second highest in Somerset. The choir stalls are modelled on the stalls in Chester Cathedral .

The Church is open from 6am to 6.30pm every day.