St Johns Abbey Gatehouse, St Johns Green, Colchester, Essex

Photograph taken 26 Jun 1925 © Historic England Archive ref: BB007873

This gatehouse is the only building that remains of the Abbey of St John the Baptist. A Benedictine abbey was founded here in 1096-7. The abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1539 and in 1544 it passed to Sir Thomas Darcy. In 1548 some of the buildings were converted to a residence. Part of the precinct is thought to have been converted to a formal garden. The house served as a Royalist stronghold during the siege of Colchester in 1648. Following the imprisonment of Dutch prisoners in the 1660s, the remaining buildings, except the gatehouse, were demolished. The grounds passed to various owners before being acquired by the War Office in 1860. This property is now in the care of English Heritage (2010) and managed by the Colchester Borough Council. Find out more.

Location

Essex Colchester

Period

Tudor (1485 - 1602)

Themes

A nunnery was first documented here in 603. A monastery was founded during the abbacy of Aldhelm (c675-705). It became Benedictine in the reign of Edgar (959–975) and remained so until dissolved in 1539. The final Abbey Church was built circa 1160-70 and had 13th/14th and 15th century additions. The 431 feet (131 m) tall spire, collapsed in a storm around 1500. The west tower fell around 1550. As a result of these two collapses, less than half of the original building stands today. The abbey was closed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 by Henry VIII. It was sold, with all its lands, to William Stumpe, a rich merchant. He gave the abbey church to the town for continuing use as a parish church, and filled the abbey buildings with twenty looms for his cloth-weaving enterprise.
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St Johns Abbey Gatehouse, St Johns Green, Colchester, Essex

Location

Period

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