Downside Abbey

The community was founded in 1607 at Douai in Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, under the patronage of St Gregory the Great (who had sent the monk, St Augustine of Canterbury, as head of a mission to England in 597). 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.[5]

The Priory of St Gregory was therefore the first English Benedictine house to renew conventual life after the Reformation. 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 canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.[6]

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 Mount Pleasant, Downside, in Somerset, in 1814.[7]

The monastery was completed in 1876.[8] Downside was granted Abbey status in October 1899 (with Ampleforth and Douai) and Prior Edmund Ford was elected the first Abbot in 1900.[9]

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.[10]

Dom Nicholas Wetz of Belmont Abbey was appointed as Prior Administrator for a two-year period from September 2018,[11] and in August 2020 he was elected the first Abbot of Downside Abbey in six years.[12] 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.[13][1][14]

The building of Downside abbey church was begun 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:[15]

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 those old boys of the school killed in World War I.

Consecration of the Abbey: the procession of relics towards the west door

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.[16][17] The consecration was reported in the Wells Journal for 13 September 1935.[18]

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.

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.[19] 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 and Corpus Christi Priory, Manchester.[20]

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.[21] The choir is the work of Thomas Garner (who is buried there), dedicated in 1905.[22] The nave by Giles Gilbert Scott (c. 1923–25) remains unfinished,[23] with its western wall in crude Lias stone standing bare and undecorated. The Lady chapel is acknowledged as one of the most complete and successful schemes of Sir Ninian Comper,[24] with a reredos and altar furnishings incorporating medieval fragments and a reliquary containing the skull of St Thomas de Cantilupe.[25] The tower, completed in 1938, at 166 feet (55 m), is the second highest in Somerset. The choir stalls are modelled on those of Chester Cathedral.[26]

The building, together with the attached north part of the cloister, was designated as Grade I listed in 1986.[27]

The first pipe organ at Downside was built in 1805 by George Pike England of Tottenham Court Road for the Music Room in Brighton Pavilion;[28] when removed in 1882 (without its original case) to the south transept gallery of the new church, it had 16 stops over two manuals and pedals.[29] Removed to the parish church of Saint Vigor in nearby Stratton-on-the-Fosse in 1907, it survives today somewhere in America, having been sold following water damage sustained in Stratton in 1969.[30]

The England organ was to be replaced in 1905 with a new instrument by Garrard of Lechlade, consisting of three manuals and 55 speaking stops:[31] it was supplied two years later by the renamed firm of Garrard, Spooner & Amphlett, but was never completed satisfactorily.[32]

Organ case in the gallery above the south transept

The current organ in the abbey church was built by John Compton in 1931 to replace the Garrard organ: it has 142 speaking stops over four manuals and pedals. This extraordinarily large number of stops is derived from 38 ranks of pipes by means of extension and transmission. The whole instrument is enclosed within three stone and concrete chambers with swell shutters facing upwards, except the Tuba box which speaks down into the transept. Unusually, the casework (designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and carved by Ferdinand Stuflesser of Ortesei in the Italian Tyrol) has no pipefronts: it is of solid oak with fretwork, but has no roof: consequently, the whole organ speaks up into the transept vaults and is projected down the nave. The console, a typical Compton luminous stop button affair which faces west from near the crossing down the north side of the nave, is made from timber from HMS Bellerophon, which transported Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo.[32]

In May 2020, it was reported that in the time following the 2018 release of the IICSA report, the school experienced major financial difficulties due to legal costs, settlement payments and falling rolls, and was obliged to sell some of its Renaissance-era paintings.[10]