more monastic discoveries at St John’s abbey

Yesterday (8th November), Trust archaeologist Adam Wightman completed a report on the archaeological monitoring which the Trust conducted recently at the Colchester Garrison Officers’ Club at St John’s Green in Colchester. We monitored the excavation of pits for the installation of floodlights around the club’s new tennis courts. The club building burned down a couple of years ago, and a new building has now been built. The Trust has been conducting various fieldwork projects on the site during the works.

The Officers’ Club lies within the precinct of the historic St John’s abbey. St John’s was an important Benedictine monastery, which was founded in 1095 or 6 by Eudo de Rie or ‘Dapifer’ of the Norman ruling elite after the Norman conquest in 1066, and who also built Colchester castle. The abbey has had a long and chequered history, and now only the gateway and some of the precinct wall survive above ground, with the associated St Giles’ church which is adjacent to the precinct wall.

The Trust – led by surviving Trust director Philip Crummy! – undertook a large excavation on the site of St John’s abbey in 1972, ahead of the demolition of some of the precinct wall and the construction of Southway and the St Botolph’s roundabout. Among our discoveries in 1972 were fifteen early medieval rubble-lined graves, probably of monks, not far from the tennis courts where we recently conducted our monitoring.

During our recent monitoring, the Trust recorded human remains and part of an early rubble-lined grave, as well as part of a demolished sandy-clay wall. The wall could represent part of a monastic building which was destroyed by the fire here in 1133. It was overlaid by a deep layer of dark soil which may have been deposited during the large-scale earth-moving at the abbey after the fire of 1133, when there was a programme of rebuilding (a bit like the Officers’ Club, almost a thousand years later). In 2011, during an evaluation on the site of the club building, the Trust made a major discovery when we found part of the site of the abbey church. In 2012, during the construction of the new club building, we found more of the site of the church and an associated burial area.

St John’s abbey church was laid out in 1096 and building began in 1097; it was completed in 1115. Eudo de Rie was buried in the abbey church in 1120. The abbey was Dissolved in 1539. It became a residence and passed through the ownership of many families. The abbey would have included a number of buildings within the precinct wall, and burials, but any of its surviving buildings were destroyed during the Siege of Colchester in 1648. Apparently Eudo de Rie founded the abbey because of a miracle which took place here. After centuries of use, re-use and abuse, the abbey now consists of only three structures and the fragments below ground…

The Trust has conducted quite a few archaeological projects on the site of St John’s abbey over the years, and the results of these are all published in the reports which are available in our online archive at http://cat.essex.ac.uk – for these most recent results, see CAT Report 737.

The images show part of the site; Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway in one of the pits; part of the rubble-lined grave; and a fragment of worked stone.

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