Qualla: Cleeve Abbey

Cleeve Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Gough, CC BY 2.0. In 1400, a report reached the English government with an unlikely complaint: the abbot of Cleeve Abbey and three of his monks were leading a gang of 200 bandits, attacking travellers across the Somerset countryside. For a house of the austere Cistercian order -- monks who had taken vows of poverty, silence, and manual labour -- this was a spectacular fall from grace. Yet Cleeve's story is full of such contradictions: an abbey that was chronically poor but built a refectory ceiling carved with angels, that was dissolved by Henry VIII but survived as a farmyard, and that now stands as one of the best-preserved medieval monastic sites in southern England precisely because no one thought it worth demolishing.

Read more: Cleeve Abbey on Qualla

Image: Keith Gough | CC BY 2.0

Cleeve Abbey: Twelve Monks from Lincolnshire

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Gough, CC BY 2.0. On 25 June 1198, twelve Cistercian monks led by Abbot Ralph arrived at this site beside the Washford River in Somerset, sent from Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire to establish a new house. Their patron was William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln. The Cistercians chose locations that wer...

Read more: Cleeve Abbey on Qualla

Image: Keith Gough | CC BY 2.0

Cleeve Abbey: Angels in the Rafters

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Gough, CC BY 2.0. Cleeve was never wealthy, but its monks spent as though they were. In the fourteenth century, elaborate polychrome tiled floors were laid throughout the abbey -- an expensive, high-status product that signalled ambitions well above the community's means. Then, between 1435 and 14...

Read more: Cleeve Abbey on Qualla

Image: Keith Gough | CC BY 2.0

Cleeve Abbey: Dissolution and the Farmyard Years

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Kilpin. The original uploader was Rkilpin at English Wikipedia., CC BY 3.0. In 1536, Henry VIII closed Cleeve during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The abbey was converted into a country house, then gradually declined into use as farm buildings -- a fate that, ironically, preserved it. The church itself was demolished, but the domestic buildings aro...

Read more: Cleeve Abbey on Qualla

Image: Robert Kilpin. The original uploader was Rkilpin at English Wikipedia. | CC BY 3.0

Cleeve Abbey: A Shilling for the Ghosts

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patrick Mackie, CC BY-SA 2.0. Among Cleeve's more colourful figures was Cleeva Clapp, a local farmer's daughter named after the abbey, who served as a guide in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For a shilling a head, she would describe her nightly 'communings' with the ghosts of the monks -- ...

Read more: Cleeve Abbey on Qualla

Image: Patrick Mackie | CC BY-SA 2.0