The community of St. Edmund was formed in Paris in 1615 by Dom Gabriel Gifford, later Archbishop of Rheims and primate of France. With his backing the community flourished. Expelled from Paris during the Revolution, the community took over the vacant buildings of the community of St Gregory's in Douai in 1818.
Amid the political upheavals caused by the Dreyfus affair around the turn of the 19th century, the French prime minister Waldeck-Rousseau introduced an anti-clerical Law of Associations (1901) that "severely curbed the influence of religious orders in France".[2] This led to the community being given the minor seminary of St. Mary in Woolhampton by Bishop Cahill of Portsmouth, moving from Douai to Woolhampton in 1903. The abbey church was opened in 1933 but only completed in 1993 due to financial constraints.[3]
The monastery was greatly expanded in the 1960s with the building of the new monastery designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd. The abbey had in its charge Douai School until the latter's closure in 1999. In 2005, two monks returned to Douai, France to form a community there and restore the historic links to English monasticism.[4]
Jacobitism
The monastery and its community have traditionally maintained strong links to the Stuart dynasty and the Jacobite cause; with King James II of England buried in the monastery in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris (the community's home from the early 17th century till the French Revolution and the community's relocation to Douai in northern France), members of the House of Wittelsbach (present pretenders to the Jacobite claim) being educated at the community's former boarding school (at their present location), and the immediate past abbot, Geoffrey Scott OSB, is a member of the Jacobite Society.[5]
Present
In July 2014 a monk was ordained priest, the first priestly ordination since 2007. As of 2020, the community consisted of 23 monks.[6] The monks serve in parishes across five dioceses.[7] The patron of the monastery is St Edmund King and Martyr, whose feast day is 20 November.
Music
The Abbey Church houses two pipe organs, a smaller organ[8] of 1978 in an Italian style by Tamburini and a larger organ[9] of 1994 in a modernised English Classical style by Kenneth Tickell.
Because it contains these organs, and especially because of its unique and reverberant acoustics, the Abbey Church is frequently used as a recording location by musical performers. Commercial albums recorded there include:
