Warden Abbey Vineyard
 Southill Park, Biggleswade, Beds, SG18 9LJ

(Click on the Map for a larger version)
      
Contact: Mrs Sue Parke,

Web Address: www.wardenwines.co.uk               Email: sue@wardenwines.co.uk   

The Cistercian Abbey of Warden was founded in 1135 by Walter Espec as the daughter Abbey to Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire which he had founded three years earlier.

The monks planted the 'great' vineyard of about 10 acres and the 'lyttel' vineyard of about 4 acres. It is this smaller site that was replanted with vines in 1986.

Life in the monastic vineyard of the middle ages was clearly not all meditation and devotion. In 1492, two abbots visiting the Abbey reported that 'infamous women have mostly entered the monastery to the greatest disgrace of the said monastery'. Forty years later, when King Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of the monasteries, the last Abbot of Warden Abbey wrote that he had almost totally lost control of his monks. One of them had spent the night drinking in Shefford (the local town) and had not come back till morning matins. Other of his monks were described as 'common dronkerds'.