Osney Abbey

Osney Abbey
Oxfordshire
Engraving of Osney Abbey in 1640
Location
Grid reference:	SP50490592
Location:	51°44’59"N, 1°16’12"W
Order:	Augustinian
History
Founded:	1129
Information
Condition:	Remnant walls visible

Osney Abbey or Oseney Abbey, later Osney Cathedral, was a house of Augustinian canons at Osney in Oxfordshire. It stood on Osney Island – the land between the modern course of the River Thames to the west and the Seacourt Stream to the west which forms the border with Berkshire. The site is to the south of the modern Botley Road, down Mill Street by Osney Cemetery, next to the railway line just south of Oxford station.

The monastery was founded as a priory in 1129, becoming an abbey around 1154. It was dissolved in 1539 but was created a cathedral, the last abbot Robert King becoming the first Bishop of Oxford. The see was transferred to the new foundation of Christ Church in 1545 and the building fell into ruin. It was one of the four renowned monastic houses of mediæval Oxford, along with St Frideswide's Priory, Rewley and Godstow.

History

The house was founded by Robert D'Oyly the younger, Norman governor of Oxford, prompted by his wife, Edith Forne, who, to expiate the sins of her former life as the mistress of Henry I, solicited her husband to this pious work with a story of the chattering of magpies, interpreted by a chaplain as souls in Purgatory who needed the foundation of a monastery to expiate their sins.

Edith was buried in Osney Abbey, in a religious habit, as John Leland describes upon seeing her tomb as it was on the eve of the dissolution: ‘Ther lyeth an image of Edith, of stone, in th' abbite of a vowess, holding a hart in her right hand, on the north side of the high altaire’. The legendary dream of magpies was painted near the tomb.

Osney was (along with St Osyth in Cirencester, Llanthony, and Holy Trinity, London), one of the great Augustinian Canon Regular houses of mediæval England. It provided six of the canons of Henry II’s re-foundation of the Church of the Holy Cross, Waltham as an Augustinian house in 1177. When Waltham became an abbey in 1184, the first abbot was a canon of Osney. In 1199, the church of St George in Oxford Castle was translated and annexed to the abbey.

Woodcut from a sketch by Thomas Hearne, published in 1720

The most significant event in the history of the abbey came in April 1222 when the Synod of Oxford met there, charged with applying the Lateran decrees in England. When in July 1237, the papal legate Otto Cardinal Candidus came to Osney, a brawl broke out between a group of scholars from the university and the cardinal's men in which the legate's cook was killed. Otto himself was locked for safety in the abbey tower, emerging unscathed to lay the city under interdict in reprisal.

The current navigation of the River Thames replacing the old navigation to the east side of Osney Island, is believed to have been engineered by the canons of the Abbey to turn their mill.

After the abbey's surrender in 1539, it was, from September 1542 until June 1544, the seat of the new Bishops of Oxford before the see transferred to the new foundation of Christ Church in Oxford. It has been described as the greatest building Oxford has lost. Great Tom, the bell described as the "loudest thing in Oxford", now hanging in Tom Tower at Christ Church, was taken from the tower of Osney Abbey on its dissolution. A good deal of the monastic property was also transferred to Christ Church.

The remains of the abbey remained as a source of building material for the city and by Charles I during the Civil War. Drawings of the remains were commissioned by John Aubrey in 1640, and the much reduced ruins were later drawn by Thomas Hearne of St Edmund Hall in 1720.

Today

All the buildings have now been destroyed except a rubble and timber-framed structure which may date from the 15th century. The remnants are Grade II listed.

On the same site is the long disused Osney Mill, now converted to housing, close to Osney Lock. To the west is Osney Cemetery and to the south is Osney Mill Marina, on a 500m long island originally formed for the mill. To the north are the busy arterial road leading west out of Oxford, Botley Road, and Oxford railway station.

Outside links

• Ruins of Osney Abbey

References

• Margaret Dickens, History of Hook Norton 912 to 1928
• E.B. Fryde et al., eds, Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edition (London: Royal Historical Society, 1986)
• David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Mediæval Religious Houses of England and Wales (London: Longman, 1971)
• George Lipscomb, The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (1847)
• Jan Morris, Oxford, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 2 pp 90-93: Houses of Augustinian canons: The abbey of Oseney (Victoria County History)
• A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 4 pp 364-368#s3: Sites and Remains of Religious Houses (Victoria County History)
• W.A. Pantin, 'The Fourteenth Century' in The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages, ed by C.H. Lawrence (Sutton Publishing, 1999 (1965))
• Maurice Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928)
• Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2page 334
• Postles Dave:
  • Oseney Abbey Studies, 2008
  • ’The Learning of Austin Canons: the Case of Oseney Abbey’ (Nottingham Mediæval Studies, vol 29, pages 32–43
  • 'Patronus et advocatus noster': Oseney Abbey and the Oilly family (Historical Research, vol 60, issue 141, pages 100–102
• Oseney abbey.; Salter, H. E. (1936). Cartulary of Oseney abbey. Oxford Historical Society. v. 89-91, 97-98, 101. Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Oxford Historical Society. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000275261.