Faringdon Abbey

Faringdon Abbey was a Cistercian monastery near the town of Faringdon in what is now Oxfordshire. King John gave the monks land at Wyke in 1203 to build it. The site lay north of the town between the Radcot Road and Grove Wood. After only a few months the community moved to Beaulieu in the New Forest. The original site remained in monastic hands as a grange. The abbey’s brief life left little trace above ground. Only earthworks and buried walls mark where the church and cloister once stood. Aerial photographs show faint lines of foundations beneath the fields. The monks’ grange buildings stood nearby for centuries after the monks left. Local place names still recall the lost monastery. Visitors today walk quiet farm tracks across the old precinct. The grassy mounds and hollows follow the plan of the vanished buildings. Grove Wood stands close by, its mature trees screening the site. Radcot Road runs along one edge, linking the abbey’s past to the present landscape. The open fields stretch away, giving a sense of the wide land once worked by the Cistercians.