The Abbey Henry VIII Destroyed | Exploring Old Bayham Abbey

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:06]Hi all, Ady here from Hans and Johns. As always, thank you so much for clicking on the video. Today I'm in Deepest, Darkest Kent, and I'm right on the Kent and Sussex border. I'm at a place called Old Baym Abbey. This is the ruins. It was built in 1209 and it remained as spiritual center until the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. It's an absolutely spectacular place. So, let's go and have a look.

[00:00:41]Old Bay tucked away right on the Kent and Sussex border. And honestly, this place already feels like something out of a fantasy film. I mean, look at that tree. It's definitely given me Lord of the Rings vibes.

[00:01:01]The abbey is hidden in this little valley beside the river. It's surrounded by trees and open fields. And then suddenly, these enormous medieval ruins just seem to appear in front of you. And the mad thing is that parts of this abbey have been standing here for more than 800 years. And when I think of how old these places are, it absolutely blows my mind every single time I visit somewhere like this.

[00:01:43]You look at these walls and arches and it's easy to think of them as just another lot of old ruins, but this used to be a fully functioning religious community.

[00:01:59]People lived here, they worked here, prayed here, ate here. This wasn't some romantic ruin back then. This was a busy living place. And BAM Abbey has a pretty dramatic history as well. So, as we wander around the ruins, I'll tell you the story.

[00:02:25]Bay Abby was founded around the year 1208, which means construction started not long after King John was on the throne. And yes, that's the Magna Carta, King John. The Abbey belonged to an order called the Premonstratenians.

[00:02:41]I probably said that completely wrong, which is a name that, trust me, no one can pronounce on the first attempt. They were also known as the white cannons because of the white robes that they wore.

[00:02:57]Now unlike monks who lived completely cut off from society, these cannons were a bit more connected to ordinary everyday people. They preached, they thought, they helped in their local communities and they also acted as priests as well. And they specifically liked building abbies in remote places.

[00:03:21]So this valley would have been absolutely perfect for them. It's quiet.

[00:03:27]It's isolated.

[00:03:29]There's plenty of fresh water nearby, plenty of land. And even today, it feels really peaceful here.

[00:03:44]It's amazing that you can still see remnants of the old chapel. There are still some stone corbals, the vaulted roof, and the old pina.

[00:03:57]There's an old staircase here that I think may have led up to perhaps a bell tower.

[00:04:05]And I think about all the feet and all the monks that would have walked up and down here carrying out their daily duties.

[00:04:34]This huge section here would have been the abbey church itself. And if you look carefully, you can still see how enormous it once was. Those giant window openings would have been filled with stained glass. And it's easy to imagine the sunlight pouring through colored medieval glass into this massive stone church. It would have looked incredible.

[00:05:17]The abbey was built mainly from local sandstone and a lot of what survives today dates from the 12 and the 1300s.

[00:05:28]But what amazes me is the craftsmanship.

[00:05:31]Even after centuries of weather, war, neglect, and collapse, you can still see so much of the carved stone details surviving up there on the arches and the columns. But this section must have been a later chapel as there's some memorials in here dating from quite recently. That was 1868.

[00:05:59]And I just think about all the hands and the people that have shaped everyone of these blocks by hand.

[00:06:17]No power tools. There would have been, of course, no modern machinery.

[00:06:22]Just amazing skill, patience, and a ridiculous amount of labor.

[00:06:48]This area would have been the closter, basically the center of the monk's everyday life. The cannons would have walked around this square constantly.

[00:07:00]They would have been praying, reading, talking, and probably trying not to freeze to death during the winter. Now, medieval abbies actually ran almost like little self-contained villages. There were kitchens, workshops, store rooms.

[00:07:19]There would have been sleeping quarters, gardens where no doubt they grew nearly all of their food. And they may even have had their own brewery. And honestly, medieval monks and cannons were surprisingly good at brewing ale.

[00:07:35]And that's probably because drinking water wasn't always trustworthy. And Bayam Abbey wasn't just religious, it was economically important, too. Because the Abbies owned land, they farmed crops, they collected rents, employed workers, and helped support their local communities nearby. So when an abbey disappeared, it affected everybody around it. And that's what becomes very important later in Bayam's story.

[00:08:10]Where the story of the abbey gets really interesting, it's because it became one of the earliest casualties of the destruction of monasteries in England.

[00:08:23]So when most people immediately think of Henry VII dissolving the monasteries in 1530s, BAM got hit even earlier than this because in 1525 Cardinal Walsey who was Henry VIII's chief minister ordered Bayam Abby to be shut down to help fund his new colleges.

[00:08:47]When the locals found out about this, they were furious. It was so tied into the local economy and community. When the cannons were removed, people got very angry and there was actually a riot here, an actual tuda riot. Now, in June of 1525, over a 100 locals reportedly marched on the abbey and they were armed with bows, swords, clubs, basically whatever they could grab and they stormed the site to bring the cannons back. And some accounts even mention people wearing painted faces and disguises, which honestly sounds even extra terrifying.

[00:09:27]And for a brief moment, the protesters actually succeeded and restored the abbey community. But it wasn't for long, the crown came back, the cannons were removed again, and a bunch of locals were arrested. And historians sometimes see this as an early warning sign of how popular the destruction of the monasteries would then go on to become across England because people genuinely cared about these places. And after the abbey was dissolved, buildings like this of course totally fell into ruin and it devastated the surrounding communities.

[00:10:13]But weirdly, by the 17 and 1800s, rich land owners actually started liking ruins. Ruins started to become fashionable because people thought they looked romantic and picturesque. So instead of clearing Baym away completely, the new owners incorporated it into landscaped gardens. So basically they turned the abbey into an enormous decorative feature. And I know that sounds bizarre now, but it's probably one of the reasons so much of the abbey has survived. And honestly, standing here today, it's not hard to understand why people fell in love with the look of it, especially on a beautiful sunny day like it is today. There's still something so atmospheric about these ruins. You get these huge empty window spaces framing the sky, the ivy creeping across the walls.

[00:11:21]And when the ruined abbies were becoming fashionable amongst the wealthy land owners, this gate house was in fact turned into summer house, which feels very strange to think about because for the medieval cannons, this would have been a practical entrance point into the abbey. It would have been busy, functional, probably constantly full of people coming and going every day. But centuries later, here we are looking at it completely differently. And instead of seeing a religious building, the new owners saw it as a romantic, atmospheric, idealized version of the medieval past.

[00:12:08]And as we look over the gate here, unfortunately, we can't get access. You can see the original bridge that would have led up to it. And even with the scaffolding supporting it, I can still imagine what this approach must have looked like hundreds of years ago.

[00:12:28]In my mind's eye, I can imagine the people arriving on horseback, messengers traveling through the valley, and maybe wealthy visitors arriving in horsedrawn carriages later on. You can almost picture the sound of hooves coming across the bridge and echoing around these stone walls.

[00:12:51]And of course, with a building this old, there's some ghost stories and they tell tales of white robed monks walking through the ruins with chanting being heard and bells ringing. Am I saying the place is haunted? I'm not saying that.

[00:13:08]But if somebody told me they saw a ghost here once, I probably would believe them.

[00:13:15]I'm going to end the video here. I really do hope you enjoyed it. What a beautiful place. Absolutely stunning. We were going to get the drone up, but unfortunately we're not allowed to cuz we're on English heritage um land. So, I'm going to show you a picture in a moment, an aerial view of what the site looks like. But if you did enjoy today's video, if you could please like, subscribe, hit the like button, I really would appreciate it. And if you'd like to help the channel a little bit more, there's the buy me a coffee link down below. Anyway, thanks for watching. See you for the next one.

[00:13:50]And here we go. So, there's the aerial view of the site.

[00:13:59]This is the old mana house. And this is the new one that they built. 368 acres, one of southern England's finest monastic ruins.