There is a danger that Downside’s abbey church will become a huge white elephant after the monks leave, according to a leading authority on heritage matters.
James Stourton, a former member of the National Heritage Memorial Fund along with several heritage boards, is calling for vision and leadership from those responsible for the magnificent Grade I church together with the monastery’s priceless collections.
The eight resident monks are planning to leave Downside, near Bath in Somerset, on 12 March, the Feast of St Gregory the Great to whom the abbey is dedicated. For up to five years, they will live in a house at Buckfast Abbey, Devon, while they consider their long-term future. Their school, now a separate legal entity, will continue to operate on the Downside estate and use the abbey church.
“Downside Abbey is being separated from the monastery and school, the very entities that gave it purpose and without these entities working together, the danger is that it becomes a white elephant,” said Stourton, a former chairman of Sothebys UK, and an old boy of another Benedictine school, Ampleforth College.
He went on: “The abbey church is the central feature of this important architectural unity and needs to be celebrated and used. I hope the monastery, trustees, and school find a way of working together. At the moment they live in fear of the future.”
Stourton believes discussions should include local communities, and the universities that have established links with Downside, in particular the abbey’s enormous library and archives. He said that from these discussions, an imaginative vision and business plan would emerge and heritage bodies would come in and support them.
In the meantime, there are worries about the security of the monastery and abbey church after the monks have gone. The secretary of the Southern Historic Churches Committee, Fergus Brotherton, said that Downside’s Director of Heritage, Simon Johnson, had shared with him his concerns on the subject.
Brotherton said: “It is concerning because if the monastery is empty, and the church is used only by the school, this raises the problem of security. At the moment we don’t know what is going to happen.”
Downside School uses the abbey church three days a week, and additionally on feast days and for other special services. Asked whether the school would be prepared to take on a share of the responsibility for maintaining the church, the headmaster Andrew Hobbs said: “The school is not responsible for its maintenance as it is not a school building, though Downside Abbey General Trust is our landlord so we pay rent for use of the school buildings.”
Another problem is a continuing dispute with villagers in nearby Chilcompton concerning a planning application to build 16 luxury houses on agricultural land at Downside. The access point to the proposed estate was changed late last month triggering a new wave of objections from residents who say it is dangerous. More than 80 objections have now been sent to Mendip District Council. Abbot Nicholas Wetz has said that the development would pay a large part of the £4 million which the monastery has promised for repairs to school buildings.
In his 16 January newsletter to Downside’s parish of Stratton-on-the-Fosse, parish priest, Dom Michael Clothier, wrote that the uncertainty about their present situation was unheard of in the lengthy annals of Downside adding: “I do feel deeply for the pain which all of you must now be undergoing.” He said that faith would come to their aid.
The community settled at Downside in 1814 and over many decades built their abbey church, designated a minor basilica by Pius XI, and filled it with precious furnishings and works of art. Caring for these, along with the other listed buildings and portable assets, has been described by a conservation architect as the biggest single heritage challenge facing the Catholic Church in the UK.
The legal separation of monastery and school was carried out following serious criticism by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) about how the monks dealt with child abuse at their school.
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