Monastery Crawl

Earlier this week I popped over to Downside Abbey in Somerset to collect a monastic archive (as you do). A parishioner kindly agreed to provide transport and, as there was room, Cally's Kitchen also joined us. Here is the boot of the car groaning with dusty documents concerning the English Augustinian Canonesses of Paris:

En route we drove through Woolhampton (on the other side of Reading) so we made the short detour to Douai Abbey, another house of the English Benedictine Congregation. Like Downside, the Abbot there is one of our leading Catholic historians. The exterior is rather unusual, due to the modern extension:


However, I think the interior works rather well - lots of space and light:

In the monastic cemetery we paid our respects at the grave of Dom Basil Griffin, twin brother of Cardinal Bernard Griffin, sixth Archbishop of Westminster (1943-56):


Of course, arriving at Downside we were able to visit the tomb of another brother of a Cardinal - Dom Jerome Vaughan, who effectively founded Fort Augustus Abbey up in Scotland, though he later had to leave the community. He was one of the many clerical or monastic siblings of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan.

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