HOME

Looking back: Cleeve Abbey 800

Thursday 25th June, 1998 was the 800th anniversary of the founding of Cleeve Abbey by the Cistercians in 1198AD. A committee of local people from the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist churches met with English Heritage to arrange a full day's programme of events to mark the occasion.

The day began at 9.30am with a Sung Mass concelebrated by the RC. Bishop of Clifton the Right Revd. Mervyn Alexander, the Abbot of Buckfast, the Right Revd. Dom David Charlesworth and Fr. Frank Norbury the parish priest of Minehead and Watchet. A small ecumenical choir led the music.

Although the weather was changable, the rain thankfully passed the Abbey site by except for a brief shower during Mass which occasioned a swift move into the common room just after the Bishop's homily. The congregation closely packed around the altar in the dim vaulted room with the unaccompanied singing and prayers beyond time, felt it had something the feeling of the catacombes and found it a deeply moving start to the day.

Then followed a Country Dancing display by 350 children from local schools. Many children also heard the Abbot of Buckfast give a talk on the monastic life and there were guided tours of the site together with presentations of monastic and medieval life by the Heuristics group.

The day ended with an ecumenical service on the site of the Abbey Church. This was conducted by Revd. Bob Earnshaw, Rector of Old Cleeve, the Revd. Michael Parsons, the local Methodist minister and the Revd. David Ireson Vicar of Watchet. The Abbot of Downside, The Right Revd. Dom Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard gave an address on the history of the English monasteries, and the loss to ordinary people through their suppression at the Reformation and their continuing contribution to Christian life and faith today. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Right Revd. Jim Thompson then spoke of the Christian qualities demonstrated in the monastic life and their contrast to the individualism and love of wealth which so often drove society today.

A combined choir of 100 from the surrounding churches, together with an orchestra of local instrumentalists under the directon of David Ogden, the Director of Music for the RC Diocese of Clifton and a Royal School of Church Music officer, led the music. This was a glorious and stirring mixture of modern and traditional pieces.

The Programme

Hymn: Thy hand, O God, has guided. (Thornbury)

Anthem: Christ is our Cornerstone (Rawsthorne)

Responsorial Psalm 122: I Rejoiced (Farrell)

Hymn: There is a Redeemer (Green)

Hymn: Lord, you give the great commission (Abbot's Leigh)

Children's Hymn: We are the church (Walker)

Hymn: I, the Lord of sea and sky (Schutte arr. Pope)

Intercession: Through our lives and by our prayers (Iona)

Hymn: Christ is made the sure foundation (Westminster Abbey)

Amen : (Monteverdi)

Vesper: Salve Regina (Plainsong)

The day ended as it would have for the monks, with the singing of the plainsong Salve Regina, as the procession moved slowly through the hushed congregation to cloister door. For a few minutes time seemed to have been suspended and the veil of Heaven was very thin.