Ampleforth Abbey: The Yorkshire abbey designed by the architect who created the red telephone box
After the English monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII in the 1530s a small Benedictine community was re-established two decades later in Westminster Abbey.
When that was closed by Elizabeth I, one surviving monk, Sigebert Buckley, fled to France and created a new monastery.
After being expelled from there during the French Revolution, in 1802 the Benedictines were offered a new home on the edge of the North York Moors.
By the turn of the 20th century Ampleforth Abbey had almost 100 monks.
The first abbey church was demolished in 1957 and today’s building, dating from 1924, was designed by the leading architect Giles Gilbert Scott, whose other commissions included Liverpool Cathedral, Battersea Power Station and the now-iconic red telephone box.
It was not consecrated until 1961.
At the community’s height in the 1960s there were 169 monks, but since then that number has reduced by half.
In the early 2000s the abbey’s lay staff began producing cider and juice from an orchard growing 70 different varieties of apple.
Before World War II the abbey school, known as Ampleforth College, began the process of transforming into one of the UK’s leading boarding schools.
In 2017 college and abbey became independent of each other, although the monks continue to oversee the spirituality of students.
The college’s alumni include actors James Norton and Rupert Everett, sculptor Antony Gormley, and Downtown Abbey creator Julian Fellowes.
The abbey lies about one mile east of Ampleforth village, which was mentioned in the Domesday Book as being owned by the Archbishop of York.
The name “Ampleforth” is thought to be a portmanteau of two Old English words and means a ford where sorrel grows.
Evidence of a Roman past was confirmed by metal detectorists in 2020 with the discovery nearby of four pieces of Roman bronze metalwork.