Qualla: Muchelney Abbey

Muchelney Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Mykura, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name means 'big island' in Old English - mycel-eg, dry ground rising from marsh. In the 7th century the Levels around Muchelney were a sodden, half-flooded plain, and the abbey founded here in 693 stood quite literally on a small island, accessible by causeway only when the water dropped. By 1086 the monks paid their annual tax to William the Conqueror in eels: six thousand of them, caught in the local rivers and rhynes. Today the abbey is mostly outlines in the grass, but the Abbot's House still stands intact, and beside it a thatched two-storey lavatory that is unique in Britain.

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Image: Nigel Mykura | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: An Island for Prayer

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neil Owen, CC BY-SA 2.0. A religious building is believed to have stood on the site as early as 693, with a charter granted by Cynewulf of Wessex in 762. The Benedictines were not formally established until the 10th century. The refounders are not entirely clear - a document of 1535, drawn up for Thomas ...

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Image: Neil Owen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: Six Thousand Eels a Year

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Domesday Book of 1086 records that Muchelney owned three islands in the Levels - Muchelney itself, Midelney, and Thorney - and that its annual tax was 6,000 eels caught from the surrounding rivers and marshes. Eels were currency, food, and tribute all at once, and the marsh t...

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Image: John Baker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: Wyke and Broke

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. The abbey's last great building campaign came under two abbots whose names sound like a lawyers' partnership: William Wyke (1489-1504) and Thomas Broke (1505-1522). They rebuilt much of the complex, funded by leasing out the Demesne farm. The Abbey Church was 192 feet long and 52...

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Image: Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: The Surrender

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Val Ghose, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1538 Henry VIII's commissioners arrived. The Dissolution of the Monasteries had been grinding through England for two years. The abbot and his small community surrendered the abbey and all its possessions to the king, signing the papers that ended eight centuries of prayer on ...

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Image: Val Ghose | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: What Was Found in the Stones

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1872 labourers gathering stone uncovered a blue coffin lid, and beneath it the pavement of the 14th-century lady chapel emerged, intact, the tiles still in their patterns where the medieval craftsmen had laid them. The discovery prompted growing local interest. In 1924 a commu...

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Image: Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Muchelney Abbey: The Lavatory That Survived

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Of all the strange things to remain from a Benedictine abbey, the most unexpected is the monks' reredorter - the communal lavatory - which still stands two storeys high and thatched, the only one of its kind surviving in Britain. The reredorter sat above a flushing drain that emp...

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Image: Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0