The Return of the Cistercians to the Midlands

Abstract

It is sometimes stated that Mount St Bernard’s Abbey in the Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, was the first Cistercian monastery to be established in England after the Reformation. But this is not so, for from 1794 to 1817, a Cistercian monastery flourished at Lulworth in Dorset, These monks, who came originally from La Trappe in France, were at the French Revolution expelled and found refuge in Switzerland. In 1794, Dom Augustine, the superior, determined to found a Cistercian house in Canada, and for that purpose several monks set out from Switzerland to Canada, travelling via England. On their arrival in London, however, they were persuaded by Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle to remain in this country. Weld gave them a home in his park at Lulworth, where a monastery was shortly afterwards built and placed under the patronage of St Susan. Over the next few years these French Cistercians were joined by many English and Irish novices, but in 1817, they received a command from the British Government either to cease to receive British subjects or to leave the country. They chose the latter alternative and left England on 10 July 1817, over sixty in number, bound for Melleray in Brittany, where they took over the former monastery, still standing after the Revolution.