Searching the site of Cerne Abbey

Today the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset is best known for the figure of the Giant cut into the hillside above the houses. Recent years have seen further research to establish its date as being Anglo-Saxon, and there has been discussion about the extent to which it has been ‘modified’over the centuries.

In the high and later middle ages however it was not the figure of the Giant - which may indeed have been overgrown at the time - but the Benedictine abbey which drew visitors to the valley. The abbey was associated with legends of a visit by St Augustine of Canterbury and the hermit St Eadwold, who was belived to be the brother of the East Anglian St Edmund the Martyr. The monastery was founded, or maybe refounded, in 987, and survived until 1539, but today all that survives above ground is the Guest House, the very handsome porch of the Abbot’s House from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and a portion of the South Gate incorporated into a house, as well as a tithe barn. In terms of national history arguably the visit to the abbey of Queen Margaret of Anjou and her son the Prince of Wales together with Lancastrian leaders in April 1471 was the most famous event in the later centuries of the abbey’s existence 

BBC News has a report about the proposed excavation at Archaeologists dig for medieval abbey

Cerne Historical Society has a webpage with more aboout the abbey and links to other information at The History of Cerne Abbas

There is another useful account of the history of the abbey and the visible remains from Escape to Britain at A Guide to the Ancient Benedictine Abbey at Cerne Abbas in Dorset

The Victoria County History account of the abbey can be seen at Houses of Benedictine monks: The abbey of Cerne