Kirkstead Abbey

Kirkstead Abbey stands on the edge of Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire as the remains of a Cistercian monastery founded in 1139 by Hugh Brito. The first twelve monks came from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, but the site soon proved too small. Robert, Hugh’s son, chose a new location in 1187 where the abbey church and its great cloister were built. The monks gained lordship of Wildmore and kept common pasture rights for themselves and their tenants. By 1537 the abbey was dissolved under Henry VIII and its last abbot, Richard Harrison, was executed after being linked to the Lincolnshire Rising. The abbey church once stretched more than 80 metres, but only a tall fragment of the south transept wall survives today. The rest is marked by earthworks of the vanished cloister, refectory, dormitory and other buildings. The surviving masonry and earthworks form a Grade I listed ancient scheduled monument. Nearby St Leonard’s Without, a 13th-century chapel, still stands beside the abbey site. A single burial is recorded: John Beke, 1st Baron Beke. Visitors walk among the grassy banks and hollows that outline the abbey’s vanished plan. The standing fragment of the south transept wall rises dramatically above the ground, showing the scale of the original church. Wildflower meadows now cover the earthworks, and the quiet fields around Woodhall Spa frame the ruins. The nearby Monks Smithy House may once have served as a grange for the abbey. The scene offers a clear sense of the once-great monastery reduced to a few stones and earthworks.