Ramsey Abbey

Ramsey Abbey stands on a low island in the flat fenland of Huntingdonshire, now part of Cambridgeshire. Founded in AD 969 by Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, on land given by Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, it grew from a small wooden chapel into one of England’s richest Benedictine houses. The abbey’s church had two towers, one described as offering a fine view from afar. In the 12th century a grander Norman church replaced the original, but Geoffrey de Mandeville later damaged the buildings when he used the abbey as a fortress. By the Dissolution in 1539 the abbey housed 34 monks and held 387 hides of land.

The abbey became a centre of Hebrew scholarship in the late Middle Ages and ranked third among abbots in Parliament after Glastonbury and St Albans. Its Ramsey Psalter, an illuminated manuscript from the late 10th century, survives in the British Library. The community paid 4,000 eels each year to Peterborough Abbey for access to Barnack limestone quarries. After the Dissolution the site passed to the Cromwell family, who removed much of the stone for colleges in Cambridge and other buildings. Later the Fellowes family built a house on the abbey church’s foundations and enlarged it under Sir John Soane.

Today three main structures remain. Ramsey Abbey House, once home to the Fellowes family, now forms part of Abbey College. The Abbey Gatehouse, in the care of the National Trust, is thought to be an inner gatehouse, its outer counterpart moved to Hinchingbrooke House. The parish church of St Thomas à Becket, originally part of the abbey, still serves the town. Nearby Bodsey House preserves the remains of a monastic grange. A medieval thurible found in Whittlesey Mere, bearing a ram’s head, is displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.