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We are Urgently Seeking to Buy Books in Bardney and the County of Lincolnshire.
Please quote or offer anything you feel may be of interest to us,
Bardney is a village in Lincolnshire.
Bardney was once a small island set in the marshy ground around the river Witham,
( the "ey" in the name means island ).
The village was originally named after the Saxon landowner - chief Bearda - hence Bearda's"ey" (Bearddanig)
from which the name Bardney then evolved.
In the 7th century (exact date-is not known) an Abbey was founded here.
The first monastery was built in Anglo-Saxon times
and is known to have been endowed by King Ethelred and his wife Osthryd.
The Abbey housed a shrine dedicated to Osthryd's uncle
This first Abbey was destroyed by Danish-Viking raiders in 870
and nearly all its three hundred monks were massacred.
In 1087 Gilbert-de-Gant the new Norman owner of Bardney and its surrounding lands
decided to re-build
and at its height the Abbey reportedly controlled over 20,000 acres and
received payments from numerous nearby churches.
This new abbey is known to have been home to the oldest
of the monastic orders the Benedictines.
The main daily duties of these monks was to recite
the seven daily services which began at 2.00 am with Vigils
(the night watch) going through to Compline at dusk.
These Benedictines were also known as 'Black Monks'
on account of the black habits they wore.
Very little is known of everyday life in the abbey
though some snippets of information are recorded as a result
of the periodic checks carried out by the Bishop of
Lincoln
who is known to have made a record of fights and misdemeanours,
he is also known to have handed out numerous very stern warnings regarding
Women visitors.
But despite all these warnings in 1437 Thomas Barton is known to have accused
his brother monk John Hale of adultery with the wife of the convent's laundryman,
various other accusations and acts of a sexual nature are known to have taken place.
In 1536 Bardney Abbey was threatened by King Henry VIII
with closure and seizure of all its assets, a similar fate was
to be met by all the abbeys and priories in the country.
In October 1536 a local rebellion (the Lincolnshire rising) broke out against this dissolution.
In March 1537 six monks from Bardney were implicated in this rebellion,
they were hung, drawn and quartered in
Lincoln.
Following the dissolution the land was then acquired by Sir Robert Tyrwhitt
who demolished the church and used the stone to convert the
other monastic buildings into a very fine house for himself and his family.
He moved into the abbot's lodgings and converted the cloister into a walled garden,
the rest of the buildings were left to fall into decay and finally ruin.
In 1718 Browne Willis is known to have surveyed the site and observed
that all the buildings including Tyrwhitt's house
had gone and only a fragment of the gatehouse still remained standing.
On February 17th 1909 the history of Bardney Abbey
was finally to be brought back to life
by the local vicar, the Reverend Charles Laing.
He undertook the excavation of the ruins and
together with his team of labourers worked for six years to
unearth the ruins of the main abbey buildings.
Work which was to be stopped by the war and Laing's death.
The ruins of the Abbey were to be left open on view for the next twenty years
but during that time the exposed stonework rapidly deteriorated due to the weather
and in 1933 it was decided to cover up all the exposed ruins,
this in turn would help preserve them.
This covering was done in such a way that the
outlines of the buildings would still remain visible.
Visitors today can readily appreciate the scale and position of the church,
cloister and surrounding buildings.
Nearby can also be found
Should you have any books which you may consider selling
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