Monastery Through Time

The Anglo-Saxon monastery founded by Benedict Biscop in the 7th century was laid out very differently to the medieval monastery created by Aldwin four centuries later.

The central part of the Anglo-Saxon monastery as it may have appeared in the 8th century, by Jill Atherton © English Heritage. Benedict Biscop brought stonemasons and glaziers from France, who created some of the first stone buildings in Northumbria since the Roman period. Excavations revealed that the earliest monastery had two churches, lying parallel to two large buildings, with a guesthouse close to the river. It was not uncommon for Anglo-Saxon monasteries to have more than one church. The larger one might have served local people as well as the monks. The smaller church was perhaps reserved exclusively for monks, or may have been used as a funerary chapel.

The monastery flourished in the 7th and 8th centuries but then declined, although the site probably remained a place of pilgrimage due to its association with the scholar Bede. It was re-established by Aldwin, prior of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, who was inspired by reading Bede’s Ecclesiastical History to visit the holy places of early Northumbria. With the permission of the Bishop of Durham, Aldwin began to rebuild the monastery in the 1070s. He introduced a Benedictine-style layout for the monastic buildings, based on a central cloister with an enclosed walkway where members of the community could spend time in prayer and contemplation.

  The medieval monastery as it may have appeared in the 11th century, by Jill Atherton © English Heritage.