Missenden Abbey

Missenden Abbey (also referred to as Great Missenden Abbey) was a former Arrouasian (Augustinian) monastery, founded in 1133 in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. The abbey was dissolved in 1538, and the abbey church demolished. In 1574 a house, also known as Missenden Abbey, was constructed on the site of the monastic cloisters, incorporating some of the monastic remains. The house was altered several times, gaining its current "Regency Gothic" style at the beginning of the 19th-century. The house was "gutted" by fire in 1985 and subsequently rebuilt.

Abbey

Foundation

The abbey of Missenden was founded c.1133, by William de Missenden, the lord of Missenden manor. Two of the abbey's foundation charters (those issued by King Henry I, and by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln) state there were originally seven canons, who came to Missenden from "the church of St. Mary 'de Bosco (or de Nemore) de pago Terresino". This church - thought to have been in Ruisseauville, France - was a daughter house of Arrouaise Abbey, also in France. Missenden thus became the home of the first abbey in Buckinghamshire and the second Arrouasian community in England, after Warter Abbey in East Yorkshire.