Medieval monastic houses -whether for monks or nuns- needed to be endowed with land. Large abbeys often sent out groups of monks to establish a new monastic foundation rather like a strawberry plant sending out a runner to create lots more strawberry plants.
Groups of monks might be sent to look after land that was some distance from the mother house. These groups of monks, or nuns, were called cells (not to be confused with a small room where an individual monk or nun might sleep). Eventually if they became large enough they would be described as a priory. They might even grow to abbey sized proportions. On other occasions groups of monks or nuns might be sent with the specific purpose of building a new abbey if there was a sufficient endowment of land for that purpose. Abbeys might also found priories for nuns. These nuns would be dependent upon the mother-house for spiritual direction and for the way in which the rules were administered.
Whilst the monks in the cell, priory or even abbey looked to the original mother-house for spiritual guidance they would be referred to as a daughter house. Some mother houses even had granddaughter houses. Martin Heale has researched the extent to which daughter houses were expected to send some of their income back to the mother house. Interestingly, Heale also comments that the mother house did not expect to support the daughter house. They were required to be financially independent.
Sometimes a monastic house couple begin life belonging to one order but for one reason or another the abbey might be refounded by another order. Reading Abbey was founded as a Cluniac Abbey but was refounded at a later date as a Benedictine Abbey.
This page is an on-going project. I intend to list all abbeys in England and Wales that I come across as I continue my reading.
Click on the image for each order to open a new page containing the a list of monastic houses in alphabetical order with some additional information.
Useful references:
Benedictines
The so-called ‘Black Monks’ because of their habits were the first Roman order of monks to arrive in England.
