Lost Abbey of Abingdon

Abingdon Monastery was one of the largest and wealthiest in England, and dominated the life (and skyline) of the town for over 800 years. The monastery’s building programme for the church rarely stopped throughout all that time! Due to the very thorough demolition after the dissolution of the abbey by Henry VIII, however, few abbey buildings remain, and the physical, as well as the spiritual and economic, domination of the abbey is now difficult to imagine. This booklet presents discoveries from excavations in the abbey precinct, and the plans from successive geophysical surveys since 1998, which have provided a much more detailed plan of the church, and enabled the first well-founded reconstructions of its development. It also aims to give a taste of the very wide-ranging activities of the abbey as landowner, employer and power in the town.