Coordinates: 51°32′8″N 0°4′31″E / 51.53556°N 0.07528°E
The ruined remains of Barking Abbey are situated in Barking in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in East London, England, and now form a public open space.
Dedicated at first to Saint Mary, and later to Saints Mary and Ethelburga, Barking Abbey was founded by Saint Erkenwald, Bishop of London, for his sister Saint Ethelburga in 666, as a missionary centre. All Hallows Barking, at Tower Hill, was founded by the abbey in 675.
One of the great early works of Anglo-Latin scholarship, the De Laude Virginitatis ("In Praise of Virginity"), a double (prose and verse) work in the complex Latin style taught at the Canterbury School of Adrian of Canterbury praising Christian martyrdom and spiritual virginity, was dedicated by its author Saint Aldhelm (d. 709) to the ladies of Barking.
Bede recorded the foundation. The abbey was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, and 100 years later was re-established as a Royal foundation. William the Conqueror spent his first New Year after the Norman Conquest in 1066 at the abbey. Archbishop Dunstan made Barking Abbey a strict Benedictine nunnery.
In 1541 the abbey was dissolved by order of Henry VIII. After that, the site was used as a quarry and a farm. A modern ward of the present borough is named Abbey after the ruin.
Gallery
 The ruins |
 The ruins |
 The ruins with Abbey Retail Park and Canary Wharf in the background |
See also
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Barking Abbey |
- Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council - Heritage and History, Barking Abbey
- Tudor Place - Barking Abbey
- Houses of Benedictine nuns: Abbey of Barking, A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 115-122
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