Denny Abbey

Denny Abbey is a former abbey near Waterbeach, about 6 miles (10 km) north of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, England. It is now the Farmland Museum and Denny Abbey.

The monastery was inhabited by a succession of three different religious orders. The site is a scheduled ancient monument. The church and refectory buildings survive and are Grade I listed buildings. Also on the site is a barn built in the 17th century from stone taken from the abbey.

The site, on an ancient road between Cambridge and Ely, was settled by farmers as early as the Roman period. The Domesday Book recorded that it was owned by Edith the Fair (also known as Swanneck), the of King Harold, in 1066. It was owned subsequently by the Breton lord, Alan, 1st Earl of Richmond.

The place-name "Denny" is first attested in Templar records of 1176, where it appears as Daneya and Deneia. The name is thought to mean "Danes' Island".

A group of Benedictine monks, dependent upon Ely Abbey, moved here from their water-logged monastery at Elmeney (a vanished settlement about a mile to the northeast) in the 1150s, at the suggestion of Conan IV, Duke of Brittany. They built a church and monastery, called Denny Priory, which opened in 1159. The crossing and transepts are the only parts of the original abbey that remain today. In 1169 the monks returned to Ely and the site was transferred to the Knights Templar.

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