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Cistercian Abbeys: BASINGWERK Name: BASINGWERK Location: Greenfield,
nr Holywell County: Flintshire
This abbey was founded around 1131, although the exact date cannot be confirmed. It was established by Ranulf de Gernon, earl of Chester (1129-1153) and was at first a house of the Savigniac Order in Normandy.(1) When all the Savigniac houses were absorbed by the Cistercians in 1147, Basingwerk became Cistercian. Grants of land and property came from both the Welsh princes and the English nobility. Edward I made it his headquarters while he was building Flint castle in 1277 (during his conquest of Wales), and in return for the abbey’s loyalty he granted the monks various privileges. It seems that Basingwerk’s sympathies lay with the English and the abbey provided a chaplain for Flint Castle. Basingwerk apparently suffered little during the Welsh wars although the abbey still received £100 compensation from Edward I for any damage inflicted upon its property.(2) The monastery was for an abbot and twelve monks, with a number of lay-brothers until the fourteenth century.(3) The abbey evidently exercised considerable hospitality – in the early sixteenth-century Basingwerk built new guest quarters so attractive to visitors that they flocked there in great numbers.(4) The abbey had so many guests that they had to be served in two sittings. In 1535, Basingwerk’s annual income was
assessed at £150, at which time there were probably no more
than two or three monks at the house.(5) The
house thus fell under the first phase of the Dissolution when
all houses under the value
of £200 were to be surrendered. Today only a little of the
twelfth-century walling apparently survives around the cloister
and in the east range, although the area has been fully excavated
and the precinct outlines are clearly visible on the turf. Much
of the fabric visible today, including the church, dates from the
early thirteenth century, when the buildings were generally refurbished
and extended. More important is the literary legacy of the abbey.
The Book of Aneirin, one of the Four Ancient Books of Wales,
transcribed in the second half of the thirteenth century, has
been
ascribed to Basingwerk Abbey.(6) Basingwerk
is also thought to have contributed to one of the greatest surviving
medieval monastic
Welsh
annals: the Brut y Tywysogyon of the Chronicle of the
Princes.(7) The site is
now in the care of Welsh Historic Monuments and is open to the
public at all reasonable times.(8)
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