Beaulieu Abbey
Beaulieu Abbey and Palace House are located on the edge of the New Forest national park in Hampshire, England.
The Cistercian abbey was founded by King John in 1204 and was given the name of ‘Bellas Locus Regis’, which translates to ‘the beautiful place of the King’. According to legend, in the early part of his reign, King John had an altercation with the Cistercian Order and had threatened certain monks, saying that he would have the trod upon by his horses feet. One night John had a bad dream, in that dream he was knocked to the floor and beaten severely by the monks. |
When he woke up, he stated that his body was still aching from the beatings he’d received in his dream. This changed his mind about the Order and he granted them land in Hampshire to build an abbey. While the abbey was under construction, John took a special interest and expressed that he’d like to be buried under the high alter when he died, he believed that this was his ticket to heaven. Buildings at the abbey reflected its status as a royal foundation of great size and magnificence.
30 monks from the Cistercian mother house in Citeaux, France built the abbey over a period of 42 years, who also populated it. |
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The first Abbot was Hugh who eventually became the Bishop of Carlisle. He stood high in the Kings favour and often served in important diplomatic missions. Before he became Bishop, he was removed of his position as Abbot after he was accused of ‘eating off a silver plate, keeping a guard dog in his bedroom with a silver chain, and too much revelry with Earls and Knights’.
Beaulieu was established as an exempt abbey by Pope Innocent the 3rd, which meant that the abbot only had to answer to the Pope.
Beaulieu’s sanctuary rights were so extensive and strongly enforced that it became a refuge for fugitives within its region, sheltering all types of criminals including debtors and also political enemies of the Government. Following the Battle of Barnet in 1471, Anne Neville, the wife of Richard Neville, Duke of Warwick, sought sanctuary at the abbey. Perkin Warbeck, who was also known as the pretender, claimed that he was Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, also took sanctuary at the abbey after being pursued by the army of Henry VII.
On the 2nd of April 1538, the abbey was surrendered to Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Many of the monks were granted pensions and the last Abbot of Beaulieu, Thomas Stevens received 100 marks a year. Abbot Thomas lived out the rest of his days as the treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral until he died in 1550.
A total of 32 men were living in houses with their families in sanctuary when the dissolution took place. These men were there for a variety of reasons, from felony to debt to murder. There was some debate about what should be done with them after the abbey was dissolved, but ultimately they were allowed to remain in their houses on the abbey grounds permanently following much pleading from the former Abbot Thomas and Government officials. Pardons were granted to some of the criminals, including Thomas Jeynes who murdered a man in Christchurch.
After the dissolution, Sir Thomas Wriothesley bought the estate and later became the 1st Earl of Southampton. The abbey was demolished and the building material was sold off for use in other properties. The original gatehouse was converted and extended into a country house in the 16th century and further extensions and renovations were made in the 19th century. The estate was mainly used as a hunting centre between 1606 to 1632 and was visited frequently by James I and Charles I after him.
In 1714, John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu, spent over 2000 pounds on improvements to the house and grounds. In 1865, the Beaulieu estate was gifted to Henry Montagu, who received the estate as a wedding present and made the house his permanent home. Henry later became the 1st Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. He restored the Medieval parts and enlarged the house.
At the age of only 2 years old, Edward Douglas Scott Montagu inherited the title of 3rd Baron Montagu, after his father died of pneumonia in 1929. Edward held his peerage for the third longest time of 86 years and 155 days. In 1952, Edward needed to find a way to make money to keep the estate and after much consideration he decided to open the house and abbey up to the public. As visitors entered the entrance hall, they were met with five vintage cars, which he installed as a tribute to his father who was a motoring advocate and pioneer. Later, this would develop into the National Motor Museum which eventually had its own purpose built building near to the house. Edward died after a short illness on 31st of August 2015 aged 88. The Barony past onto his eldest son, Ralph Douglas Scott Montagu, now the 4th Baron of Montagu.
The present Lord and Lady Montagu still live in the house and parts of the house and gardens are still open to the public.
The present Lord and Lady Montagu still live in the house and parts of the house and gardens are still open to the public.
The last vicar of Beaulieu, Reverend Robert Powles, served between 1886 until 1939. He claimed that he was in contact with the ghosts on a daily basis and often communicated with them. He was known to speak openly to his parishioners about them, in one comment he said, “Brother Simon was here again last night. I heard his boots squeak”.
In his last serving years, during the 1930’s, he held a special midnight mass for the ghosts on Christmas Eve every year. Edward Montagu’s sister, Elizabeth Varley knew the vicar and said:
“He always appeared perfectly sane and seemed to be on good terms with the ghosts, whom he saw and spoke to regularly”.
“He always appeared perfectly sane and seemed to be on good terms with the ghosts, whom he saw and spoke to regularly”.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the infamous author of Sherlock Holmes, was well known to be a spiritualist. At one time he visited Beaulieu Abbey and House to hold a séance and paranormal investigation with the help of a medium. The medium came into contact with a ghost whose apparition appeared before them and told them that a coffin was buried beneath another coffin in the ruins of the abbey. After an excavation, this coffin was found and it contained the bones of a man with a hole in his skull and was wearing a crown.
One late afternoon in the summer of 1937, three young boys, local to the area, were fishing on the Solent in a dinghy. As they left up the Beaulieu River to go home, strong currents started to send them off course just as heavy rain came down. They headed for the nearest mooring point and found a disused boat house which they decided to use as a shelter until the rain calmed down. As midnight approached, the rain got heavier and after an hour or so, one of the boys opened the boat house door to check if the weather had settled. He was watching the rain for a while, when he noticed a rowing boat that was mooring on the shore.
The boys watched the boat moor and five men wearing white habits like monks, stepped out of the boat and walked up the beech towards Beaulieu Abbey. In the morning when the rain had stopped, they checked where the monks moored the boat to find no trace of the boat and no footprints in the sand. They later told their parents and friends but no one could offer a logical explanation.
The half sister of Edward, 3rd Baron Montagu, Elizabeth Varley, once had a strange experience while in her bedroom:
“It had been going on for quite a while before I became conscious of it... It was the sound of many voices in repetitive singing, which faded and strengthened like the sound from a primitive wireless. At first, I thought it was a wireless in the servants hall. But the sound wasn’t coming from there. I couldn’t tell you where it was coming from”.
Later on, she found that the melody she heard was a Gregorian Chant. After this first time of hearing the chanting, she heard it on a number of occasions, sometimes while in the company of others. She told a close friend of her fathers, the radio pioneer, Marconi, and he told her that he wasn’t a believer in ghosts but he believed that the idea of sounds being played from the past don’t ever end, comparable to the rings that grow outwards on the surface of water when disturbed by a pebble.
“It had been going on for quite a while before I became conscious of it... It was the sound of many voices in repetitive singing, which faded and strengthened like the sound from a primitive wireless. At first, I thought it was a wireless in the servants hall. But the sound wasn’t coming from there. I couldn’t tell you where it was coming from”.
Later on, she found that the melody she heard was a Gregorian Chant. After this first time of hearing the chanting, she heard it on a number of occasions, sometimes while in the company of others. She told a close friend of her fathers, the radio pioneer, Marconi, and he told her that he wasn’t a believer in ghosts but he believed that the idea of sounds being played from the past don’t ever end, comparable to the rings that grow outwards on the surface of water when disturbed by a pebble.
Edward Montagu said he’d never witnessed any apparitions or the monks chanting but he believed a haunting could have been caused by a murder in the abbey in the 19th century, involving a butler and a maid. He did however report the smell of incense being burned in one of the rooms that was once part of a chapel. This smell was locally believed to signal tragedy for the people of the village or the abbey. Its also believed that the chanting of the monks becomes louder around the area when there has been a death in the village.
When the National Motor Museum opened by Lord Montagu, the curator was Charles Beatty. Charles once said in an interview said that his marriage broke down due to the interactions of the ghost of Abbot Hugh, the resident ghost of the estate. His wife at the time was the novelist, Joan Grant who became famous at the time for her book, ‘The Winged Pharaoh’. 20 years later, she claimed that she’d channelled the material for the book whilst meditating and during séance.
By 1959, the curator of the National Motor Museum was Michael Sedgewick, who also claimed that he heard the chanting of the monks and believed that was a radio, but he couldn’t identify the source. He experienced this twice during his time at Beaulieu. They were also heard by the wife of filmmaker Fred Zimmerman during the filming of ‘A Man for all Seasons’. When the film was being made, the camera crew were based high up on one of the walls when the focus puller suddenly felt like he’d been pushed, nearly causing him to fall off the wall.