Women guests to be welcomed at Pluscarden Abbey

A Benedictine abbey in Scotland is to welcome female guests for the first time.

Pluscarden, near Elgin in Moray, is making the move as part of a proposed £4 million renovation that will create a second refectory adjacent to the monastic kitchen and will allow women to eat within the Abbey but still separately from the monks and male guests.

The new proposals also provide for restoration of the abbey’s fourth wing as accommodation for women, who currently sleep and self-cater in separate lodgings at some distance from the abbey. There are also plans for a new library.

Abbot Anselm Atkinson said: “Our policy hitherto has been that the male guests, whose guest house is part of the abbey building, take their meals with the monks, while the women guests, who are accommodated some distance from the abbey, prepare meals for themselves. The new arrangements would balance improved hospitality with maintenance of separate facilities in the Benedictine community.”

He added: “We thought the best compromise would be to have a dining [area] for female guests adjacent to the monastic kitchen, so that one kitchen could provide meals for two separate dining areas. In this way our female guests will have easy access to the church and to dining facilities at the abbey like the men have always enjoyed.”
The renovation plans for the medieval monastery which was founded in 1230 and re-established in 1948, have been described as “historic” by the Lord Lieutenant of Moray, Lt Col. Granville Johnston, who will lead a fund-raising initiative.