Lamspringe Abbey

Lamspringe Abbey

Location within Lower Saxony
Monastery information
Full name	Lamspringe Abbey
Order	Canonesses Regular; Benedictine
Established	847; 1630
Dedicated to	St Adrian of Corinth & St Denis
Controlled churches	Lamspringe Abbey
Site
Location	Lamspringe, Hildesheim, Germany
Coordinates	51°57′N 10°00′E / 51.95°N 10°E / 51.95; 10Coordinates: 51°57′N 10°00′E / 51.95°N 10°E / 51.95; 10
Other information	The relics of St Oliver Plunkett and the head of St Thomas of Hereford.

Lamspringe Abbey (Stift Lamspringe, later Kloster Lamspringe) is a former religious house of the English Benedictines in exile, at Lamspringe near Hildesheim in Germany.

The foundation by Count Ricdag of the first religious house at Lamspringe for canonesses is conventionally dated at 847. This Augustinian priory became Lutheran during the Reformation and was destroyed during the Thirty Years' War in 1626.

In 1628 English Benedictine monks in exile approached the Bursfelde Congregation with a request for premises and in 1630 were granted the derelict buildings at Lamspringe, although they were unable to take possession and begin work on the monastery until the early 1640s, after the end of the Thirty Years' War. The English Benedictines rebuilt the abbey, dedicated to St Adrian of Corinth, a 3rd-century martyr, and St Denis, and from 1671 ran a school here for English Catholic boys, mostly from Yorkshire and the north, which became a centre for Catholic education for, and influence on, Great Britain.

Unlike the other English monasteries in exile, Lamspringe was a large abbey rather than a small priory, and was wealthy, with wide estates, and the community's wealth and status were reflected in the quality of the building works undertaken. The abbey church, serious work on which began in 1691 under abbot Maurus Corker, and the remaining monastery buildings, executed in rather grand style by abbot Joseph Rokeby up to 1731, still remain virtually intact.

Lamspringe Abbey housed the relics of St Oliver Plunkett, taken there in 1684 by the later Abbot of Lamspringe, Corker, who had been with him in prison in London, as well as the head of St Thomas of Hereford.