Qualla: Prinknash Abbey

Prinknash Abbey: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Traveler100, CC BY-SA 3.0. Locals can't agree on how to say the name. Some pronounce it Prinidge, others Prinnish, neither matching the spelling on the road sign. The locals know what the rest of us have to learn: the land has been associated with Benedictine monks since 1096, when the Giffard family, fresh from arriving in England with William the Conqueror, gave it to Serlo, Abbot of Gloucester. Nearly nine centuries later, the monks are still here, still keeping the canonical hours, still mixing incense by hand in a workshop that perfumes the surrounding fields with frankincense and rose.

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Image: Traveler100 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Prinknash Abbey: A Hunting Lodge for Henry

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. Around 1520, William Parker, the last Abbot of Gloucester before the Reformation swept it all away, built much of the present house as a hunting lodge. Twenty years later he was dead and the monasteries were being dissolved. Sir Anthony Kingston rented Prinknash from the Crown on...

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Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Prinknash Abbey: Return of the Monks

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Anstiss, CC BY-SA 2.0. The waiting ended in 1928. The previous owner had left Prinknash to the Catholic Church with a request that it be given to a community of Benedictines living on Caldey Island off the Welsh coast. These monks had converted en masse from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1913, a small ...

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Image: David Anstiss | CC BY-SA 2.0

Prinknash Abbey: The New Abbey and the Return Home

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Penny Mayes, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1939 Cardinal Hinsley laid a foundation stone for a grand new abbey. Then came the war. Plans were redrawn, modesty replaced ambition, and architect Frank Broadbent eventually produced the long, low building the monks finally moved into in 1972. The old house, renamed St Peter...

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Image: Penny Mayes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Prinknash Abbey: Clay from the Foundations

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neil Owen, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sometime in the early 1940s, Dom Asaph Harris noticed something interesting in the soil being dug for the future abbey's footings. Red clay, the kind that fires well. He started experimenting. Brother Thomas Morey took up the work in earnest, and by the end of the decade Prinknas...

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Image: Neil Owen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Prinknash Abbey: The Daily Round

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Penny Mayes, CC BY-SA 2.0. What remains is the rhythm. The monks pray the canonical hours: matins, lauds, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline. Mass is celebrated at 8:30 every morning, including Sunday. Brother Patrick once designed sacred screens for Clifton Cathedral in Bristol. Dom Sylvester Houedard, ...

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Image: Penny Mayes | CC BY-SA 2.0