The Abbey is Benedictine and is known for its beautiful and reverent liturgies. Because the West has reached its fall, monasteries such as this have taken on even greater importance. There is peace here. The location is about 30 miles from London.
From their website:
"The monks sing the daily round of offices as laid out in the Rule. The only exception is that of the Office of Vigils, which they divide over two weeks on account of the small size of the community. The monastery has an excellent reputation for its liturgical tradition and its music. For this reason, many people travel a long way to share in the Sunday Conventual Mass. Both the Ordinary and Extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite are employed at the monastery. The community has an indult from the Holy See which regulates certain monastic usages of the 1962 missal."
Visiting here is a stark reminder that before the Protestant Revolt, in England there were around 260 monasteries and 183 friaries dissolved by Henry VIII. In total, this was part of an estimated 900 religious houses that were done away with between the years 1536 - 1540.
The Abbey has an interesting story. It was founded long after that tragedy in the year 1881 by the Empress Eugénie of France. Spanish by birth, in her youth she had lived in Spain, France and England.
Following the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870, Napoleon III, his wife Empress Eugénie and their son, the Prince Imperial (Louis-Napoleon), were exiled from France and took up residence in England.
They lived at Camden Place in Chislehurst, Kent. Here Napoleon III died in 1873 and was buried at St. Mary's Church in Chislehurst.
The Empress spent the remainder of her life working to commemorate the memory of her husband and the Second French Empire.When the Prince Imperial died in 1879, the grief-stricken Empress desired to establish a monument to her family. Therefore, she founded the Abbey in 1881 as a mausoleum for her husband and son, wishing that the burial site in the crypt of the chapel be a place of silence and prayer.
The Abbey church therefore included the Imperial Crypt, inspired by the royal crypt of the Basilica of Saint-Denis located on the edge of Paris, where the kings of France are entombed and where the Emperor by tradition should have been buried.
The Empress had the bodies of her deceased husband and son reburied here. When she died, her body was also buried in this same mausoleum alongside her beloved family. Visitors enter the crypt today and pray before their mortal remains, kept in granite sarcophagi donated by Queen Victoria.
When the Empress died in 1920, King George and Queen Mary attended her funeral at the Abbey on the 20th of July. Also in attendance was King Alfonso and Queen Victoria of Spain. The royal presence was significant at the Solemn Requiem Mass -- a Catholic liturgy with a Protestant monarch in attendance.
The Abbey property was built in an eclectic style of mixed architecture, giving it a certain charm. Art, as Aristotle said (and as is seen here), is not a chronology, but a story. It presupposes intelligent selection according to a form conceived in the hearts of artists over time.
The stunning chapel is Gothic, a flamboyant look that allows for different interpretations and adaptions of decoration. The design allows for much natural light. The architect was French, Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur.
One of the many relics kept in the chapel is the thigh bone of St. Alban.
Originally the monastery was under the care of the Premonstratensian Canons. They were replaced in 1895 with French Benedictines from the Abbey of St. Peter in Solesmes, France. It was Dom Paul Delatte, the Abbot of Solesmes from 1890-1921, who established the monastic house of Farnborough.
The monks were greatly influenced by the great Dom Prosper Guéranger who served as abbot of Solesmes for nearly forty years. He is credited with re-establishing monastic life in France after it had been wiped out during the violence of the French Revolution.
Later the French monks at Farnborough gradually died out. Today the monks are English-speaking, no longer juridically part of the Solesmes Congregation of Benedictines, but instead members of the Subiaco-Cassinese Congregation.
Since 2008 the Abbey is also known for its crowned statue of St. Joseph, located in a side chapel. Originally the statue was enshrined at St. Joseph's College of the Mill Hill Missioners (before it was sadly closed). Pope Pius IX granted a canonical crowning of the statue, carried out by Cardinal Manning in 1874.
The Abbey supports itself through donations and a book publishing business. The monastic farm has sheep, chickens, and honey bees. The gift shop is open to the public. Visitors can stay in the guesthouse. Organ recitals are also held here on occasion. Public tours of the Abbey take place every Saturday at 3:00 pm, including a visit to the crypt to see the royal tombs.
God reward and protect this small community and may it always flourish under the banner of St. Benedict.
It is good for pilgrims to visit here. So many are saddened today that Gregorian chant can only be heard as a digital recording or in a concert hall. Actually, visitors to the Abbey hear Gregorian chant sung LIVE by real monks. Gregorian chant is prayer. Monastic culture remains the best that can be thought and said of prayer in all ages.
We live in a time when many people lack religious motivation, patriotism, a sense of history, greatness, shame, and honor. They fail to realize that these virtues are in part culturally determined by our Catholic roots. We have lived on cultural capital from past Catholic generations, having failed to counteract depletion. Visitors here see clearly how rich the topsoil of England is with Catholicism.
The Protestant Revolt junked the Catholic Faith and now we rebuild, having reaped the post-modern emptiness with its cold wind. One solution for England and Europe is the revival of Western monasticism. Anglicans still kneel to adore the Real Absence. Catholics kneel to adore the Real Presence.
While Anglicanism was more than anything a political movement, the universal Christian religion remains the Catholic Faith, making a strong comeback anywhere where monasteries flourish according to the words of Christ, "Be ye therefore perfect" (Matthew 5:48).
For more information, see here.
Photos are courtesy of the Abbey and Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP and Dom Ælred Hawker, OSB.
