Downside Abbey
Downside Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in England and is the senior community of the English Benedictine Congregation. Until 2019, the community had close links with Downside School, for the education of children aged 11 to 18. Both the abbey and the school are at Stratton-on-the-Fosse, between Westfield and Shepton Mallet in Somerset, South West England. In 2020, the community of Downside Abbey consisted of 15 monks. The community left the abbey in 2022, moving first to Devon and then in 2025 to Belmont Abbey, Herefordshire.
The Abbey Church of St Gregory the Great, begun in 1873 and unfinished, is a Grade I listed building; Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described its Gothic Revival style as "a splendid demonstration of the renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England"., the monastic buildings on the Downside site are largely vacant.
History
Foundation and development
The community was founded in 1607 at Douai in Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, under the patronage of St Gregory the Great. The founder was the Welshman St John Roberts, who became the first prior and established the new community with other monks from England who had entered various monasteries within the Spanish Benedictine Congregation, notably the principal monastery at Valladolid. In 1611 Dom Philippe de Caverel, abbot of St Vaast's Abbey at Arras, built and endowed a monastery for the community.The Priory of St Gregory was therefore the first English Benedictine house to renew conventual life after the Reformation, thus it has the status of the senior community of the English Benedictine Congregation. For nearly 200 years the monastery trained monks for the English mission and six of these men were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Two of them, Saints John Roberts and Ambrose Barlow, were among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
French troops invaded Flanders during the French Revolution. The monastic community was expelled by them, after a period of imprisonment, and in March 1795 the community was permitted to proceed to England. They settled for some 20 years as guests of Sir Edward Smythe at Acton Burnell, Shropshire, before finally settling at a manor house called Mount Pleasant, at Downside, Somerset, in 1814.
The monastery was completed in 1876. Downside was granted Abbey status in 1899 and Prior Edmund Ford was elected the first Abbot in 1900.
21st century
In 2018–2020, following an investigation of Downside School by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, financial strain on the abbey led to the sale of assets including Renaissance paintings.Dom Nicholas Wetz of Belmont Abbey was appointed as Prior Administrator for a two-year period from September 2018, and in August 2020 he was elected the first Abbot of Downside Abbey in six years. In the same week, it was announced that the monks would begin the search for a new home due to "smaller numbers and changing circumstances" rendering the current building unsuitable for the future; in that year there were 15 monks. In the spring of 2022, the community moved to the temporary accommodation of "Southgate House, in the grounds of Buckfast Abbey, Devon, where we will live as the Community of St Gregory the Great".
This left vacant the monastery, which once housed a 50-strong community. By 2025, Downside School had repurposed the refectory into a sixth form centre.
In March 2025, it was announced that the Community of St Gregory the Great would transfer in the upcoming summer, for a trial period of two years, to Belmont Abbey in Herefordshire. Although the two Benedictine communities will live together, they will remain separate entities for the time being. This transfer was completed in July 2025.
Abbey church
Construction
The building of Downside abbey church began in 1873 with the transepts and the Lady Chapel. The foundation stone was laid on 1 October 1873 and the ceremony was reported in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette on 9 October 1873:Yesterday week the foundation stones of the new church and collegiate and monastic buildings were laid amidst much ceremonial. Archbishop Manning presided at the ceremony, and he was accompanied by Bishop Clifford of Clifton, The Bishop of Newport and Menevia, the Cistercian Abbot of Mount St Bernard's, Leicestershire, Monsignor Capel, Monsignor Parfitt, Dr. Neve, the Vicar-General of the Diocese, Dr. Williams, President of Prior Park College, and among the Benedictine clergy, to which Order Downside belongs, was the Very Revd. Dr. Sweeney, of Bath. The ceremony commenced with Pontifical High Mass, celebrated by Dr. Clifford. After the Gospel the Archbishop preached, taking as his text, "One body and one spirit", Eph iv 4. After Mass, the music of which was strict Gregorian, a procession was formed and moved through the grounds of the college to the spot where the stones to be laid were prepared. The chief stone, forming the base of the north transept of the church, was laid by Archbishop Manning; the stone of the college by the Bishop of Clifton, and that of the monastery by the Bishop of Newport. At the end of the ceremony about £100 were laid upon the stone, but in addition to that promises of contributions were very liberal. At the conclusion of the religious part of the day's proceedings the Benedictine Fathers entertained the visitors, numbering about 200, at a luncheon laid out in the exhibition room of the college. The style of the new building, the architects of which are Messrs. Dunn and Hansom, of Newcastle, is mediaeval Gothic. The church, it is said, will be exceptionally grand, and with its lofty tower and spire will be a striking object to all the neighbourhood. The building is to be constructed of stone from the neighbouring quarries at Doulting, which it may be mentioned furnished the material of the structure of Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey. The present Benedictine community purchased about 70 acres of land at Downside in the year 1814, and removed thither from Acton Burnell in Shropshire. By degrees they have increased their property to some 350 acres, and are known to have the best cultivated farms in their part of the county of Somerset.
In 1925, the unfinished nave was dedicated to the former pupils of the school killed in World War I.
Consecration
The abbey church was consecrated in 1935. At the same time it was raised to the rank of a minor basilica by Pope Pius XI. The consecration was reported in the Wells Journal for 13 September 1935.To-day, with the full solemnity of Catholic ritual, Downside Abbey, which was commenced more than a half-a-century ago, was consecrated by the Cardinal Prince-Primate of Hungary, Monsignor Seredi, who is one of the Benedictine Members of the Sacred College. The ceremony was attended by Cardinal MacRory from Ireland, seven Archbishops, twelve Bishops and fifteen Abbots. Over 500 priests accepted invitations to attend and among the lay guests were the Lord Mayor of London and leading members of the Roman Catholic community throughout Great Britain. In honour of the occasion the Abbey Church has been raised by the Pope to the dignity of the Minor Basilica – the first in England – and this confers upon the Abbot the right to wear the Cappa Magna, a long black cloak. Cardinal Seredi, who directly represented the Pope, consecrated the High Altar and performed the greater part of the consecration of the church, the building of which has cost over £200,000.
Status
The church houses the relics of St Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, an Irish martyr, executed at Tyburn in 1681, who entrusted the disposal of his body to the care of a Benedictine monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. The church is one of only four in the United Kingdom to be designated a minor basilica by the Roman Catholic Church, the others being St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, the National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk, and Corpus Christi Priory, Manchester.Description
The church is built in the Gothic Revival style, in Bath stone ashlar with plain red tile roofs; the east chapels are roofed in copper sheeting. It is designed to rival in size the medieval cathedrals of England that were lost to the Catholic Church through the Reformation. The earliest part is the decorated transepts by Archibald Matthias Dunn and Edward Joseph Hansom, dating from 1882.The choir is the work of Thomas Garner, and was opened on 20 September 1905, when the monks celebrated a Requiem Mass for all of the deceased members of the community.
The nave by Giles Gilbert Scott remains unfinished, with its western wall in crude Lias stone standing bare and undecorated. Scott also reordered the quire in 1934, when the original high altar was turned into the Blessed Sacrament altar and a new altar placed three steps west on a slightly lower elevation; the stools were replaced and modelled of the ones from Chester Cathedral. This arrangement lasted until the decrees of the Second Vatican Council and so in 1968 Francis Pollen redesigned the sanctuary so that the high altar was brought forward and the choir stools were moved backwards.
The Lady chapel is acknowledged as one of the most complete and successful schemes of Sir Ninian Comper, with a reredos and altar furnishings incorporating medieval fragments and a reliquary containing the skull of St Thomas de Cantilupe. The tower, completed in 1938, at 166 feet, is the second highest in Somerset. The building, together with the attached north part of the cloister, was designated as Grade I listed in 1986.