The ruined remains of Barking Abbey are in situated in Barking in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in East London, England; where it forms a public open space.
Formally The Abbey of Saint Mary, and later the Abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Ethelburga. The first Barking Abbey was founded by St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, for his sister Saint Ethelburga in 666, as a missionary centre. All Hallows Barking, at Tower Hill, was founded by the abbey in 675. One of the great early works of Anglo-Latin scholarship, the De Laude Virginitatis (In Praise of Virginity), a double (prose and verse) work in the complex Latin style taught at the Canterbury School of Hadrian praising christian martyrdom and spiritual virginity, was dedicated by its author Saint Aldhelm (d. 709) to the ladies of Barking.
Bede recorded the foundation. The Abbey was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, and 100 years later was re-founded as a Royal foundation. William the Conqueror spent his first New Year after the Norman Conquest in 1066 at the Abbey. Archbishop Dunstan made Barking Abbey a strict Benedictine nunnery.
In 1541 the Abbey was dissolved by order of Henry VIII. After that, the Abbey site was used as a quarry and a farm. A modern ward of the borough is named Abbey after the ruin.
Gallery
 The ruins |
 The ruins |
 The ruins with Abbey Retail Park and Canary Wharf in background |
See also
External links
- Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council - Heritage and History, Barking Abbey
- Tudor Place - Barking Abbey
- Houses of Benedictine nuns: Abbey of Barking, A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 115-122
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- This page was last modified on 10 October 2008, at 19:19.
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