Beautifully Ruined

King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1541 was devastating but it has left this county with many spectacular ruins. Stephen Roberts takes a tour.

- Stephen Roberts

MONASTICISM came to Surrey early; around the mid-17th century. Of course, corpulent, piggy-eyed monarch, Henry VIII, has a big stake in this tale. Desperate for a son and needing a divorce from barren Catherine of Aragon, he invoked the break with the Pope, the abandonment of Roman Catholicism, the establishment of an English Church and our Reformation. In the wake of this came the Dissolution of the Monasteries, as Roman Catholic houses were closed, their monks turfed out and rich proceeds distributed among the King and his cronies. There, the English Reformation in one paragraph.

One thing that Henry’s Dissolution gave us was some of the most romantic ruins the county possesses. This region was no great focus of monastic life, as it was ‘economically marginal’ at that time, something which didn’t change until the railways came. There may not be many then, but there are some beauties.

Chertsey Abbey (Benedictine)

This is where it started, with an abbey founded in 666 AD. Ravaged by the Vikings around 872, it was re-founded by Benedictines in 964, then dissolved in 1537. Regarded as Surrey’s ‘senior’ abbey, the first established in the county, it was also the major landowner among our abbeys.

As the original burial place of King Henry VI, Chertsey Abbey also drew an honourable mention i Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ (Act 1, Scene 2).