Qualla: Syon Abbey

Syon Abbey: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George James Aungier, Public domain. On 14 February 1547, the coffin of Henry VIII rested overnight at Syon Abbey on its way from Westminster to Windsor for burial. According to the chronicles, a Franciscan friar had prophesied twelve years earlier that the king's body would be desecrated by dogs - as had happened to the biblical King Ahab. That night, as the coffin lay in the dissolved abbey's ruined chapel, some 'corrupted matter of a bloody colour' was said to have leaked onto the floor and been licked up by the abbey's stray dogs. The story may be invented. The location is not. Syon Abbey, founded in 1415 by Henry V on a bend of the Thames at Isleworth, was once the wealthiest religious house in England. It was dissolved by Henry VIII, briefly restored under Mary I, dissolved again by Elizabeth I, and chased into exile in the Netherlands, then Portugal, then Devon. The community survived, unbroken, for 596 years - the only English religious house to do so. The last three sisters closed it in 2011.

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Image: George James Aungier | Public domain

Syon Abbey: The King's Great Work

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Syon was born from one king's guilt. Henry IV had usurped the throne of his cousin Richard II in 1399 and was implicated in Richard's murder in 1400 and the killing of the Archbishop of York Richard Scrope in 1405. To expiate that guilt he vowed to found three monasteries. He die...

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Image: Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Syon Abbey: An Abbey Run by Women

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George James Aungier, Public domain. Syon was a dual monastery - 85 people in total, 60 women and 25 men - but the women ran it. By the Bridgettine rule, the abbess was the head of the entire community, including the male confessor general, the twelve priests, the four deacons, and the eight lay brothers who lived i...

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Image: George James Aungier | Public domain

Syon Abbey: Reynolds at Tyburn

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George James Aungier, Public domain. The dissolution came hard for Syon. Many of its monks initially accepted Henry VIII's title as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Some, however, refused. Among the refusers was Richard Reynolds, a brilliant doctor of divinity later canonised as a saint. Reynolds was the one w...

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Image: George James Aungier | Public domain

Syon Abbey: Lisbon, Devon, and the End

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George James Aungier, Public domain. Unlike most dissolved English communities, the Syon nuns refused to disperse. They went to the Netherlands together. Mary I called them back in 1557, and they returned briefly to their old buildings, which had remained largely intact under the Crown. Elizabeth I dissolved them ag...

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Image: George James Aungier | Public domain