Qualla: Lesnes Abbey

Lesnes Abbey: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Richard de Luci helped Henry II in the quarrel with Thomas Becket. The quarrel ended in 1170 with four knights swinging swords inside Canterbury Cathedral, and the Archbishop dead on the flagstones. In 1178, after eight years of carrying that public shadow, de Luci founded an abbey in the marshes east of Greenwich. He retired here in 1179, took the habit, and died three months later. They buried him in the chapter house on 14 July, beneath the cool stone he had paid to raise. The Abbey of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr was, from the start, an act of penance.

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Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lesnes Abbey: On the Edge of the Marsh

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land at Lesnes had passed to Bishop Odo after the Norman Conquest and was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Loisnes in the Hundred of Litlelai. By the time de Luci chose it, the abbey was built on a low rise where the ground climbs out of what was then tidal marshland,...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lesnes Abbey: Wat Tyler's Detour

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bencherlite, CC BY-SA 3.0. In June 1381, when England was convulsed by the Peasants' Revolt, a local man named Abel Ker led an uprising in Erith. A group from his town pushed their way into the abbey and forced the abbot, who as a major landlord was a target of the revolt, to swear an oath supporting them....

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Image: Bencherlite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lesnes Abbey: Wolsey's Pen Stroke

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cardinal Wolsey, before his more famous role in suppressing larger monasteries for Henry VIII, was given a licence by the Pope in the 1520s to dissolve small religious houses with fewer than seven inmates. Lesnes was one of his earliest casualties. The abbey closed in 1525, eleve...

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Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lesnes Abbey: The Mulberry on the North Side

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the north side of the ruins stands a single black mulberry tree, Morus nigra, planted in the late 18th or early 19th century. Its trunk has split with age and the tree now leans against an external prop, like an elderly relative who refuses to retire. Children passing on the G...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lesnes Abbey: What You See Now

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carlwev (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The London Borough of Bexley has owned Lesnes Abbey since 1986. The ruined walls have been consolidated and the entire ground plan of the church and cloister is now marked out, low and clear, so visitors can walk what was once nave and transept and chapter house. Around the ruins...

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Image: Carlwev (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0