from Our Lady's Mirror Autumn 1937

Laleham! The name conjures up pictures of wide lawns and magnificent trees, one at least, eight centuries old.

In the centre of much natural charm stands the present Abbey house, faced by a striking classic porch. A house of dignity, silence and prayer; it seems to be looking with its long windows down the ages and yet out into the future, with calm and contentment. Behind the Nuns’ house is a charming low building surrounding a quad, with timber cloisters on all four sides. Here is the Convent School, fitted up in the most up-to-date manner, a building of light and sun singing in its joyous brightness.

By the entrance is a very delightful apsidal Chapel for the girls and adjoining it the Chaplain's quarters, while a little way off is the dairy and the other offices necessary to a large establishment of nuns and a school.

But Laleham has not only known its religious in the Twentieth Century, when the present community of S. Peter’s, Westminster, entered into possession. Indeed, its story in its connection with monasticism goes right back to the days of the last of the Saxon kings, if not beyond. It is known that the Confessor gave the Manor to his Abbey on Thorney Isle, since when, until the Dissolution, it is pretty certain that two or three of the extern brethren of Westminster were more or less regularly in residence.

Laleham, originally spelt Leleham, was a part of the Spelthorne Hundred and land acknowledged from early date as belonging to the suzerainty of the Abbot and Convent of Westminster.

The present Abbey site is mentioned as one of four “appurtenances” of Staens, under the charter of Edward the Confessor, granting and confirming lands to Westminster, and later documents (dated 1291) refer to Laleham as of “those members of Staens which had belonged to Westminster for time immemorial.” Doomsday Book refers to Staens as “Terra Sancti Petre, Westmonasterii,” and says to this “manor pertain four berewicks and they were there in the time of King Edward.” A berewick is a small manor. Laleham has been identified as one of these.

Adjoining the manor were two hides belonging to the Earl of Mortaine, held from him by the Abbot of Fescamp.

Other lands, or perhaps the Convent manor was held by the Reeve of Staines from the Lord Abbot, but he could not dispose of them without the leave of the Chapter at Westminster.

There were on the piece six villains [villeins] and seven cottagers, meadow and pasture land. Other land was held by Robert Blunt from the King in Laleham and a certain nun Estrild, held it of him. Originally it seems the manor was held by Achi, a house carle of King Edward the Confessor.

The Norman Kings wanted to make Laleham into a game preserve, they took it and killed most of the people and burnt their houses, but the Abbot of Westminster, withstood the usurpers, notwithstanding, Littleton and much land adjoining was lost.

Sir Guy de Brien however got use of the manor house (a mere hunting lodge) but no more, as it seems the King feared the ire of Westminster.

The Monks continued to own a grange on the site of the present Abbey and exercised manorial rights until the Dissolution.

Two or three times the various Abbots went to law in the hope of recovering the lost lands, choosing a time when the reigning King was having trouble with his nobles, but somehow or other the Barons always prevented their succeeding.

Undoubtedly, the nobles would have filched the Laleham estate away from Westminster if they could, but it lay too near London and Windsor for such a deed to escape the King's knowledge.

The road through the manor was of considerable importance for some centuries as very much of the traffic to and from Surrey and Sussex passed along it, and the right to tax all-comers, except the King and his messengers, belonged to the holders of the manorial rights. This brought a large revenue to the Monks of Westminster.

In 1293 the Rector of Laleham Chapel is mentioned as being acquitted from the collection of the tenth for the relief of the Holy Land.

About 1439 the Church at Laleham became the Chapel of ease to Staines and so continued until the Dissolution. At the time of the destruction of the monasteries the people of this district, though nominally and on the surface practising Catholics, were really much influenced by the “new religion” and we are told that this had so developed, that any known Catholic passing through the district alone, was waylaid and disappeared for ever, and all efforts to catch the evildoers and to lay hands on those who contrary to the law had translations of the Scripture were always in vain.

When Henry VIII's ministers gave orders for the dissolution of the Religious Houses the people did not wait for the Royal Commissioners to come to Laleham but they ransacked the Grange and its lands of all they desired and destroyed the rest.

When the King's officers arrived they found all the valuables gone. In consequence, we are told, the whole village was laid waste and it is noticeable that, with the exception of the Church, there is no trace of Tudor or any earlier architecture on the manor.

In 1548 a rough census mentions 180 houslying people in the Parish.

From the Sixteenth Century the history of the land becomes clearer. The site of the manor was leased by Westminster in 1538 to one John Williams for 76 years, and in 1588 leased on the same terms to Thomas Kay and in 1608 to Sir Thomas Lake, one of the King's new knights. In 1612 it was granted to Sir Henry Spiller who leased the site to one Jane Thompson six years later. In 1630 there was litigation over it (12 years rent unpaid and “waste and spoil”) and Jane Thompson accused of having neglected to hold the manor courts and of having instituted new tolls for horses passing through the river and meadows.

In 1640 there were proceedings for recusancy begun against Sir Henry’s wife, Lady Anne. These were interrupted by the Civil War in which Sir Henry, a Royalist, was captured and imprisoned in the Tower. He was forced to compound his estates for £8,000 to free himself. He died in 1650 with half the sum still unpaid. His grand-daughter and a son-in-law, Sir Thomas Reynell, paid the rest of the fine and were given the estate.

Sir Thomas took the manor, and his son of the same name inherited it. From him it passed to his daughter and her husband, and then in 1723 to a son of the second Sir Thomas. The latter's son died without heirs in 1735 and Sir Thomas conveyed the reversion to Sir Thomas Lowther of Whitehaven (a former Governor of Barbados). But Sir Thomas continued to hold the manor until 1741 (or 1746). In 1768 it was in the hands of Sir Robert Lowther's second son, Sir James, who in 1784 became Earl of Lonsdale. He died without heir in 1801 and in 1802 the Earl of Lucan came into possession (Lucan motto “Spes mea Christu"). Richard, the second Earl of Lucan, built the present house. He was succeeded by George, the third Earl (the Field Marshal blamed for the charge of the Light Brigade). He married in 1829 and in that year, Maria, Queen of Portugal, then in her minority, came to live here.

Now, once again, on the site of the house and ground farmed by the Monks of Westminster, English Benedictines live. Nuns have replaced the Monks, in response, perhaps, to the prayers offered long ago by Estrild the Nun, before King Edward gave the site to the monks of his renowned foundation. This year a new and very beautiful Choir has been built for the use of the community. Here the night office is sung as well as that of the day, and on or near the same place the Holy Sacrifice is offered by Priests of the line of the same Saxon and Norman clergy who prayed and said Mass before the Dissolution.

Estrild's work is being carried on after nine hundred years. She should be much in the prayers of her successors to-day.

NOTE.—Laleham Abbey is the Mother house of the Sisters of S. Peter's, Westminster. It is this community which has the Hospice of Our Lady at Walsingham and to whom the pilgrims and visitors and the restorers of the Shrine there owe so much for their ceaseless work, aid and sympathy. All friends of Walsingham have a great debt of gratitude to the Reverend Mother and Community of S. Peter's.