Ealing Abbey facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ealing Abbey
The Church and Abbey of Saint Benedict of Nursia
The Abbey Church – front
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OS grid reference	TQ1742781453
Location	Ealing, London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Roman Catholic
History
Founded	March 1897 (1897-03)
Founder(s)	Cardinal Herbert Vaughan
Dedication	Saint Benedict of Nursia
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II
Designated	19 January 1981
Architect(s)	Frederick Walters
Style	Perpendicular Gothic
Administration
Deanery	Ealing
Archdiocese	Westminster
Province	Westminster

The Abbey of Ealing is a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery located on Castlebar Hill in Ealing, England. It is part of the English Benedictine Congregation.

The shrine is dedicated to Saint Benedict of Nursia. In 2020, the Abbey had fourteen residential monks.

History

The monastery at Ealing was founded in 1897 from Downside Abbey, originally as a parish in the Archdiocese of Westminster. It was canonically erected as a dependent priory in 1916 and raised again to the rank of independent conventual priory in 1947.

Pope Pius XII raised the building to the status of an abbey in 1955.

The building

The architect of the Abbey Church, a Grade II Listed building, was F A Walters. Two or three bays in the nave were open by 1899 and part of the monastery in use by 1905. By 1915 the sanctuary and Lady Chapel together with more bays were completed. The west end together with the four western bays were completed by 1934 by Edward John Walters, the son of F A Walters.

Nave of the Church of Saint Benedict, part of the abbey

Two bombs damaged the church in 1940. The first destroyed the organ chamber and the War Memorial Chapel. The second destroyed the east end, including the sanctuary and choir. Only two stained glass windows survived, although damaged.

Restoration of war damage was started in 1957 and completed by 1962. The church was enlarged and the transepts completed by Stanley Kerr Bate. The Monks Choir beyond the crossing and Lady Chapel were added in 1996-98 to the designs of Sir William Whitfield.

The single hammerbeam nave roof has a painted decoration, with the monograms IHC and SB (for St Benedict).

The large west window, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin attended by the heavenly host, is by Burlison and Grylls. The window in the south transept, a memorial to victims of two world wars, is by Ninian Comper and William Bucknall (c.1960). It depicts a beardless Risen Christ and Saints David, George, Andrew and Patrick.

There is a painting of Peter's Denial of Christ by Jusepe de Ribera.

Apostolate

Parish

One of the main apostolates of the Abbey is running a major parish in Ealing centred on the Abbey Church of Saint Benedict where both the parish and monastic liturgies take place.

Music

Ealing Abbey Choir of boys' and men's voices sings at the Sunday Conventual Mass. The choir appeared in the BBC television programme Songs of Praise in 2005.

The Abbey has an active programme of music recitals, which include the choirs and the organ. Occasional concerts by other choirs are also held.

The Lay Plainchant Choir gives lay people the opportunity to practise and sing chant. The choir provides opportunities for workshops and training. The choir has weekly rehearsals and sings monthly at a Sunday Mass. Those members available also sing periodically at a local care home for elderly people suffering from dementia.

Hospitality

The monks of Ealing accept clerical and lay men as guests in the monastery, on the understanding that guests will attend morning mass and evening vespers with the monks. Residential and non residential guests are welcome at the sung liturgy of the hours in the Abbey Church and the monks have a house for guests and retreatants.

School

A major work of the Abbey in the past has been teaching and administration in St Benedict's School, founded as Ealing Priory School in 1902 by Sebastian Cave. This is an independent day school for boys and, since 2007, girls at both the junior and senior levels. There is also a small co-educational nursery. Since 1987 the Abbey has engaged a lay headmaster for the school having previously provided the headmaster from foundation. In 2012 the trust of St Benedict, Ealing created a new charitable trust, St Benedict's School, and passed school administration to a new board of governors. As a result, members of the monastic community are more free to choose different apostolates. The Abbey also has close links with the nearby girls' school St Augustine's Priory, a former convent school.

Benedictine Study and Arts Centre, renamed Benedictine Institute

The monks of Ealing also run the Benedictine Institute, which was originally suggested in 1986 by Francis Rossiter, the Abbot, and opened in 1992 by Laurence Soper, then Abbot. The present Abbot, Martin Shipperlee, has continued his support since his election in 2000. The Institute, which is endorsed and supported by the Archdiocese of Westminster, has developed and provides a Liberal Arts programme of adult education and a programme of Sacred Liturgy, with some officially validated courses. The studies pursued now focus upon Sacred Liturgy and the Liberal Arts, including theology (go to directory of institutions) and both modern and classical languages, of which the Latin summer school has become a regular feature of the annual programme.

The Benedictine Institute, an umbrella for The Liturgy Institute of England and Wales (Institutum Liturgicum), St Bede Library, Ealing Abbey Pottery and London Spring are housed in Overton House, a Victorian mansion property in Castlebar Road adjacent to the Abbey built by John M. Bartholomew, son of the founder of John Bartholomew and Son, the map-maker and publisher of atlases; the name of "J.M. Bartholomew" features in some carved stones in the walls of the garden. The property was purchased by Downside Abbey in 1930 and sold to Ealing Abbey upon its independence from Downside in 1955.

The St Bede library contains three main collections for undergraduate liberal studies and graduate study in theology and liturgy, based on a collection assembled in Oxford, London and Rome from 1978 to 1992. These were subsequently supplemented by purchase and gift, in particular by donations from members of the Alcuin Club.

From 2002 until his retirement in 2015 the Institute's principal and head of Liturgy, James Leachman, served as professor and later as tenured professor of Liturgy at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy at Sant Anselmo in Rome. Throughout this period he directed the Institute's work; since 2010 Fr Daniel McCarthy OSB has shared much of the teaching and administration of the Liturgical Institute. The UK arm of the project, Appreciating the Liturgy (based on the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia), founded and directed by James Leachman and Daniel McCarthy, a monk of St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, has been housed since 2009 in the former "Scriptorum" at the Centre, originally established by Bernard Orchard in 2003.

The Centre publishes the periodical Benedictine Culture twice each year.

Monks of Ealing

Ealing Abbey was the home for parts of their careers of various notable monks.

Bernard Orchard, the biblical scholar, was a distinguished monk of Ealing.

Between 1933 and 1939, David Knowles, the monastic historian and later Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge resided there and conducted the research for his magnum opus The Monastic Order in England.

Cuthbert Butler also lived at Ealing following his retirement as Abbot of Downside from 1922 until his death in 1934. John Main, a proponent of Christian meditation, whose methods are now fostered by the World Community for Christian Meditation, was a monk of the Ealing community in the period 1959–1970 and 1974–1977.

In September 2011, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered an apostolic visitation of Ealing Abbey. The Abbey's safeguarding policies and procedures formed part of the remit of the visitors.

Priors and Abbots

The following monks have served as Prior and, since elevation to the status of Abbey on 26 May 1955, Abbot:

Gallery

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  South side of the church

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  Towards the Altar

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  View of the Sanctuary

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  West end of the church

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  Baptismal Font

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  West Window

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  South Transept Window

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  Side Altar

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  Statues within the church

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  Statue of St Benedict

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  The Baptism of Christ, painting within the church

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  A relief within the church