page_title: Sibton Abbey
section_title: The medieval abbey
hierarchical_section_title: Sibton Abbey / The medieval abbey
caption_attribution_description: English: The crumbling remains of this Cistercian Abbey lie on the edge of a wood, completely abandoned. However it must have been tended in the fairly recent past or it would be full of mature trees. This view reveals a mysterious architectural feature - an arch with no obvious purpose. There is no sign this is a 'bricked up' window, and the other side of the wall shows no evidence of this feature. An obvious row of holes right across the arch show where a floor would have been supported.
context_page_description: Sibton Abbey, an early Cistercian abbey located near Yoxford, Suffolk, was founded about 1150 by William de Chesney, High Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. A sister house of Warden Abbey, near Bedford, Bedfordshire, Sibton Abbey was the only Cistercian abbey in East Anglia. It was dissolved in 1536.
context_section_description: Sibton Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded with the normal complement of 13 monks, but by the thirteenth century the numbers of monks and lay brothers had grown, and the Abbey had grown rich, owning lands across southeast England, including twelve relatively small granges in Norfolk, Suffolk and on the borders of Cambridgeshire, as well as possessions within 10 parishes of the city of Norwich. From the beginning of the thirteenth century the Abbey also hosted a hospital at its gate dedicated to St. John the Baptist which cared for the sick.
  Sibton's architectural style was in the austere Cistercian original model, but was not devoid of ornamentation. The principal standing ruins are those of the Frater or Refectory hall of the convent, and are from the mid-12th-century phase of construction, in the late Norman or Romanesque style. The convent church, which had a central crossing, stood on the north side of the cloister, and on the east side (extending south from the south transept) was the range including the dormitory with its undercroft.
  Sibton is unusual among Cistercian houses in that the Frater (the standing ruin) formed most of the south range, aligned east and west, with the screens passage and kitchens at its western end and the dais for the high table at the east, where the great blank arch still remains in the end wall. (The Frater should normally extend at right-angles to the south range.) On the west side of the cloister was a wall separating it from an open area or lane, beyond which the western range (the Cellarium) stood. This was possibly the domain of the lay brethren, separate from the enclosed brethren in holy orders, who together made up the conventual community.
  Sibton grew rich on proceeds from various forms of husbandry, and from the wool trade which built so many grand English churches. Although Suffolk wool was not of the finest quality, according to some historians, often stained with tar or grease, it was nevertheless in great demand, particularly in East Anglia, which had many Flemish weavers anxious to convert it into exportable cloth. The abbey's various mills, of which there were at least 15 on their outlying Suffolk estates during the 13th century, both watermills and windmills, were maintained to mill grain on economic principles quite unlike those of later periods.
  The 14th-century bibliographer Henry of Kirkestede, of Bury St Edmunds, saw a copy of the Chronicon of Ralph of Coggeshall from Sibton. A 15th-century navicula de Venetiis (a type of portable sundial) found near the Abbey in 1989 is now in the National Maritime Museum.
caption: Ruins of Sibton Abbey's Refectory, looking east
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