Crowland Abbey lies in the heart of the English fenland region, in the south of Lincolnshire.

The abbey was one of the more prominent victims of Henry VIII’s and Thomas Cromwell’s Dissolution of Monasteries, an action which made England’s monarch immensely rich.

The present church has been created by adapting what was once the north aisle of the abbey.

Saint Guthlac was the founder of the abbey in the middle of the so-called Dark Ages. The land all around this area of the Anglian kingdom of Mercia was flood prone, quite isolated, yet with plenty of scope for fishing and fowling, making a perfect location for a monastic centre.

What was not taken down or pillaged following the dissolution, was further violated by Oliver Cromwell and his forces in the 1640s during the so-called English Civil War.

Since then, the graves of the succeeding generations have filled the spaces around the ruins.

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