At Abbey Wood

Serving Hatch

Only recently did I learn that there is an abbey and a wood at Abbey Wood. Stunned by my own obtuseness, I set out to discover what I have been missing all these years. Visiting ruins was a memorable feature of childhood holidays, leaving a residual affection for architectural dereliction that has persisted throughout my life.

There is a familiar style of presentation in which the broken fragments of wall are neatly cemented in place while the former internal spaces are replaced by neatly manicured lawns. This is the case at Lesnes Abbey in Abbey Wood, augmented with simple metal signs indicating ‘kitchen’ or ‘garderobe’ which set the imagination racing.

On leaving Abbey Wood station, my enthusiasm was such that I headed straight up the hill into the woods where I was overjoyed to discover myself entirely alone in an ancient forest of chestnut trees, filled with squirrels busily harvesting the chestnuts and burying them in anticipation of winter. Descending by a woodland path was perhaps the best way to discover the old abbey, situated upon a sheltered plateau beneath the hills yet raised up from the Thames and commanding a splendid view towards London.

Lesnes Abbey of St Mary & St Thomas the Martyr was founded in 1178 by Richard de Lucy, Chief Justice of England, as penance for the murder of Thomas A Becket. Richard retired here once the abbey was complete but died within three months. For centuries, the abbey struggled with the cost of maintaining the river banks and maintaining the marshlands productively. As a measure of how far it declined, it was closed by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525 as part of programme of shutting monasteries of less than seven residents, before the abbey was eventually destroyed in 1542 as one of the first to be subjected to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

After demolition, the building materials were salvaged and the abbey was forgotten until Woolwich & District Antiquarian Society rediscovered it, excavated the ruins in 1909 and the site became a park in 1930.

One of the last sunny afternoons at the end of a long summer was the ideal occasion for my lone pilgrimage. I stood to gaze upon the ancient ruins and lifted my eyes in contemplation of the distant towers of contemporary London, wondering where the events of our time will lead. Then I walked back up into the forest and it crossed my mind that I if I followed the woodland paths long enough and far enough, maybe I could come back down the hill and enter the time when the abbey flourished and witness it as it was once, full of life.