Once the home of wealthy monks, a famous knight and an industrious farmer, this lonesome relic now stands empty, save for the occasional crow, owl and wintertime wren <\/p>
All that you\u2019ll see of isolated St Benet\u2019s Abbey today is the brick tower of an 18th-century windmill set into the 14th-century gatehouse. However, this was once a thriving and powerful monastery.<\/p>
St Benet’s Abbey is near Horning, on the River Bure within the Norfolk Broads.<\/p>
The story of St Benet’s Abbey begins in the 9th century, when religious hermits occupied the site. In the 1020s, the hermits were granted property and land by King Cnut, then the ruler of both England and Denmark, and the Benedictine monastery was founded. <\/p>
Well-off donors \u2013 among them Edith Swan-neck, the wife of King Harold \u2013 gifted the abbey more land, and the wealthy monks set about improvement works including building a causeway to aid access. The monks dug peat locally, and it is these peat pits, now filled with water, that comprise the Norfolk Broads<\/a><\/b>.<\/p> During the late Middle Ages<\/a>, one of England\u2019s most famous knights Sir John Fastolf became a patron of the abbey. He died in 1459 and was buried in St Benet\u2019s Abbey Church, but lives on as Shakespeare\u2019s Sir John Falstaff.<\/p> Somehow, St Benet\u2019s Abbey escaped being \u2018dissolved\u2019 under Henry VIII. Its end was inevitable, however, and by 1545 the last monks had left. The abbey\u2019s buildings fell to ruin, but the site was used for growing crops and grazing cattle in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the early 1720s one enterprising farmer constructed a two-storey wind pump. This in turn attracted artists of the \u2018Norwich School\u2019 in the early 19th century, including John Crome, and St Benet\u2019s continues to inspire painters and photographers today.<\/p> Although little of the monastery remains, the outlines of its extensive fish ponds can still be spied beneath the grass. You\u2019ll also find a cross made from oak taken from the Sandringham<\/a> Estate on the remnants of the high altar. Then \u2013 when you\u2019ve had your fill of silence \u2013 it\u2019s an easy 2.4km walk through the Broads into the village of Ludham with its tea room, pub and pretty thatched terraces. After the magnificent loneliness of St Benet\u2019s, it\u2019s hard to believe that civilisation is quite so near at hand.<\/p> In summer, thousands of Broads cruisers putter past ruined St Benet\u2019s Abbey as they navigate the River Ant. But in winter, this place belongs solely to the wind and the birds.<\/p> Crows hang in the freezing air over the frost-silvered grazing marshes; skeins of pink-footed geese<\/a> straggle across the sky; short-eared owl<\/a> and barn owls<\/a> haunt the fields, and tiny wrens<\/a> hide in the whispering reeds. <\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Once the home of wealthy monks, a famous knight and an industrious farmer, this lonesome relic now stands empty, save for the occasional crow, owl and wintertime wren <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":32850,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-scaled.jpg",2560,1751,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-300x205.jpg",300,205,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-768x525.jpg",768,525,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-1024x700.jpg",800,547,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-1536x1051.jpg",1536,1051,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/11\/st-benets-abbey-norfolk-what-to-see-and-do-2048x1401.jpg",2048,1401,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Once the home of wealthy monks, a famous knight and an industrious farmer, this lonesome relic now stands empty, save for the occasional crow, owl and wintertime wren","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/32849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What happened to St Benet\u2019s Abbey?<\/h3>
St Benet\u2019s Abbey walk<\/h3>
St Benet\u2019s Abbey wildlife<\/h2>
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