79: Denny Abbey

An abbey that looks like a farmhouse, and has been substantially altered over the years. It owes its survival to an aristocratic patroness, and included among its many tenants is a man who famously refused to give customers a choice.

It does look like a farmhouse.

Denny Abbey was a farmhouse for half its 850yr history

For almost half of its 850-year history, Denny Abbey was just that. But appearances are misleading. Its story is like a historical jigsaw puzzle, for the building has had many different inhabitants and uses. Set near the modern village of Chattering, off the busy A10 between Elmy and Cambridge, it is hard to appreciate just how isolated this spot was during the medieval period when it was founded. In 1159 a group of Benedictine monks from the great monastery at Ely set up an offshoot church on a piece of dry, raised land in the middle of the fens. Although the site had been lived on since Roman times, life was never easy in this watery wilderness, and it is not known if it was occupied from the fourth to the 12th centuries. Access was often only possible via a causeway and it was prone to flooding during the winter. The Benedictine establishment was not a success; within 11 years they had gone back to Ely and new tenants moved in.

More monks?

The Knights Templars had been founded in the Holy Land in 1118 during the Crusades. Fighting monks, they had a reputation as good warriors and accumulated wealth through banking activities. In 1170 they were at the height of their prestige. Templars defended Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Denny was probably given to them to pay off a debt incurred by the growing cost of building Elmy Cathedral. The Templars used Denny as a sort of retirement home for elderly members of the order. They finished building the church, constructed earthworks and also dug fish ponds as the site began to be self-sufficient. The abbey owned nearby lands, which supplied it with food, and other lands elsewhere in the country, which paid rent to the Templars. Independent of the rest of the Church, they were headed by an official known as a preceptor. the community at Denny was a small one, and the church was not particularly grand, while living quarters were spartan – the tough soldier monks were not ones to complain. By the early 1300s their original function was gone, as Christians had been expelled from the Holy Land. Kings looked askance at their wealth, while popes resented their independence; the Templars’ days were numbered. In 1308 the order was suppressed for alleged heresy. By the time the Sheriff of Cambridge and Huntingdon came to arrest the Denny brothers there were just 11 left. Imprisoned, they renounced their vows. They were the lucky ones; many Templars across Europe were tortured and executed.

What happened to Denny?

Mary de Valence, Countess of Pembroke, was a young widow who took over the property in 1327. Already the founder of Pembroke College, Cambridge, she brought in a secluded order of nuns, the Poor Clares. The countess converted much of the existing church into a house for herself, introducing a level of comfort not hitherto seen there, and had a new, larger church built for the nuns. She also built a refrectory for them to dine in and various other buildings. The nuns had little contact with the outside world; an order given to a rule of silence most of the day they gave alms for the poor via a narrow hatch in a ‘dole’ gate. The nuns stayed for more than 200 years until the Reformation. During the 1530s, as English monasteries and nunneries were abandoned, Denny survived. Because the countess had provided living accommodation it was easy to convert into a farmhouse. The last abbess, Dame Elizabeth Throckmorton, was among the last of the die-hards, defying the authorities for several years before being forced to leave in 1539. Even then she retreated to her family home in Warwickshire with two or three other nuns and lived out her days according to the strict rule of her order. Essex asset-stripper Edward Elrington bought the abbey. He demolished the church and removed its contents, making a tidy profit before selling Denny back to the king.

Nothing much left of it then?

A carved face

A series of tenants moved into the countess’s former apartments, and the estate was devoted to farming. The nuns’ refrectory was used as a barn, although the original 14th century floor tiles remain. Some of the pillars and arches of the church survived, though pieces were taken away over the years until the property was barely recognisable, and a number of outbuildings were used to house farmworkers. Architectural historians have a field day working out which parts of the jumble belong to which era. Denny remained crown property until Charles I transferred it to the City of London in 1628. Leaseholders included Thomas Hobson, the Cambridge carrier whose refusal to allow customers to choose which horse to hire spawned the phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’. The farm prospered after the fens were drained during the later 1600s. During the 19th century itinerant Irish peasant families travelled at harvest to reap the corn. John Witt, a 14-year-old living at Denny in the 1840s, recalled they would sleep in the barns. During a wake for a dead child in the barn, he wrote “figures were dancing to the music of a fiddle and yelling in twilight, illuminated by candles set in the walls”.

How long did farming go on?

The Chivers family grew fruit for jam during the 1940s, while in the second world war PoWs worked the land. In 1947 owners Pembroke College gave the land to the state, although tenants remained until the 1960s. English Heritage took over in 1984. The Farmland Museum, opened in 1997, illustrates vividly how hard fenland life has been. Modern farming continues, with a yard next to the museum.