Croyland AbbeyThe Abbey Church of Our Lady, Saint Bartholomew and Saint Guthlac is the full name of the present parish church. It occupies the north aisle of the abbey.
Guthlac joined the monastery at Repton in Derbyshire when he was 24, and two years later got permission to become a hermit. Accompanied by two servants he landed on the island of Croyland in Lincolnshire on St Bartholomew’s Day in 699. Guthlac had a tough life there and died in 714.
He advised many who sought his help, including Ethelbald, who became king of Mercia as Guthlac foretold. Two years after Guthlac’s death, Ethelbald laid the foundation stone of the abbey on St Bartholomew’s Day.
The king gave lands to the monks and appointed Kenulph, from Evesham, as the first abbot. The Danes wrecked this first abbey when they invaded England in 870.
A second abbey was built around 946, but this was destroyed by a fire in 1091. Abbot Ingulphus gives a dramatic eye-witness account of the fire in the Croyland Chronicle, a history of the abbey. Everything was lost including the library and all the manuscripts in it. Ingulphus rebuilt and during his abbacy Hereward the Wake is supposed to have been buried at Croyland with his wife and his mother, Lady Godiva.
Ingulphus’ building was destroyed when the third abbey was built by the fifteenth abbot Joffrid in 1109. Although this building was hit by an earthquake and another fire, parts of it can still be seen today.
Joffrid sent monks to Cambridge to lecture which proved very popular and led to a hostel for student monks of the Benedictine order being founded at the university in 1428. This is now Magdalene College and the arms of the abbey can be seen in the quadrangle.
The fourth and final abbey developed over the centuries from 1143 and was completed after 1427. The Croyland Chronicle was still being written because the monks felt overshadowed by nearby Peterborough Abbey. They weren’t to know, but this chronicle would give Croyland the lasting fame it sought, as, to quote Michael Hicks, “The Second Anonymous Croyland Continuation is the premier chronicle of the Yorkist age.” 1 The continuations go up to 1486 so are of immense interest to Ricardians.
Richard spent the night of 26 or 27 June 1469 here with his brother Edward before moving onto Fotheringhay Castle, embarking from the triangular bridge which once spanned the river Welland. As king he annulled a bill from the previous parliament and allowed the inhabitants of Croyland to continue rearing swans.
The abbey stopped being a monastery in 1539. The choir, transepts, central tower and monastic buildings were demolished and the nave and two aisles became the parish church. The nave roof collapsed in 1720 and the south aisle was taken down to provide stone for buttresses and filling in the arches on the north side of the nave. This left the north aisle as the church.
When the building was in danger of collapsing at the end of the nineteenth century, the rector appealed for donations and raised £3000. Sir Gilbert Scott helped shore up the west front (see cover). This underwent further conservation in 1980 - 83.
1 HICKS, Michael (2005) Crowland’s World: A Westminster View of the Yorkist Age History 90:298, pp. 172-90.