Place Name
A religious house of one sort or the other existed in the area from before AD715 but is thought to have closed permanently during the the 9th-century Viking invasions. Then in 1082, a new priory was established in Bermondsey under a royal licence, by one Alwinus Child. The monks did much to improve the surrounding area, developing the marshes, cultivating the land, and embanking the riverside. They turned the adjacent tidal inlet at the mouth of the River Neckinger into the priory’s dock, naming it St Saviour’s, after their abbey. The church remained a priory until the late 14thCentury. In 1380, Richard Dunton, the first English prior, paid a fine of 200 marks to have the Bermondsey monastery’s establishment naturalised, until this point it had been an outpost for two larger French abbeys, La Charité and Cluny: this protected it from actions taken against alien properties in time of war. Full independence was achieved in 1390. Throughout the medieval period the monastery had grown rich from gifts lavished upon it by noblemen, this was no doubt helped by the monks close association with the monarchy, most notably Henry II. By the time of the Tudor period its estate included properties in Surrey, Leicestershire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Kent. It also owned the manor of Charlton, then in Kent, which had been given by Bishop Robert Bloet of Lincoln in 1093. It was therefore a prime target when Henry VIII launched his land grab on the Roman Catholic Church, the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry granted the property and its lands to Sir Robert Southwell. He in turn sold the buildings to Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Pope broke up the abbey, and built a house that incorporated several of the existing buildings, though others were pulled down. He then sold it back to Southwell who later sold it on to a London goldsmith.
