Otham Abbey

Otham Abbey was a medieval Premonstratensian monastery founded around 1180 by Ralph de Dene near Polegate in East Sussex. It began as the Abbey of St Mary and St Laurence, built on donated land and rents. The original site proved too bleak and unhealthy, so the canons moved to Bayham Abbey in the north of the county after 1208. Otham was kept as a farm and chapel before the whole estate was dissolved in 1526. The remains now sit within Otteham Court, a Grade II listed 15th-century timber-framed house mostly refaced in red brick. A small 14th-century chapel dedicated to St Lawrence survives nearby as a Grade II* listed building. The chapel still stands on the edge of the old monastic grounds. Visitors find a quiet country setting with the red-brick manor house and its tiled roof. The chapel’s simple stonework marks the site of the former abbey church. The fields around once formed the grange lands worked by the canons.