Malling Abbey

Malling Abbey

An abbey of Benedictine nuns, at West Malling in the County of Kent, England. The earliest mention of the nunnery occurs in Doomsday book (1080). The church land of Malling having fallen to the share of Bishop Odo of Bayeux at the time of the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc, then Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeded in making him restore them to him in 1076. In the next year Gundulf was appointed Bishop of Rochester; it was he who built the Abbey of Malling. The date of Gundulf's foundation is doubtful; it is given as early as 1078 and as late as 1106. In recognition of its subjection to the See of Rochester the abbey paid the annual tithe of ten pounds of wax and one boar. In the year 1190 a fire broke out which destroyed both the abbey and village, but they were very soon rebuilt. At the dissolution the abbess, Dame Vernon, and her community of eleven nuns, signed the surrender and the abbey with its land fell into the hands of Cranmer. Little of the original building is now standing; the tower is Norman up to the first two stories and Early English above. Attached to the tower are some remnants of the church, one of the transepts and a wall of the nave; the refectory is also standing. The cloisters were re- erected in the fourteenth century. Since the dissolution in 1538 it had been in the hands of private owners until 1893 when it was bought for an Anglican community founded by "Father Ignatius" of Llantony.

DUGDALE, Monasticon, III (1846), 381; Downside Review, XVII, 222.

PAUL BROOKFIELD