Welcome to the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust website
The Monastery
The Monastery was founded in 1870 by Fr Ignatius with the aim of restoring monastic life to the Church of England, and it remained in monastic use for over forty years. Eric Gill, the sculptor and typographer, lived there from 1924 to 1928. It has been owned by the Knill family since 1985.
The Pilgrimage
The Trust holds an annual pilgrimage to Capel-y-ffin and the Abbey Church, including an optional 3½ mile walk from Llanthony to Capel-y-ffin along the eastern side of the valley. The date for the next pilgrimage is Saturday 17th August 2019 (please see the News page for more details in due course).
The Trust
The Trust objectives include the care of Ignatius’ ruined abbey church, and the nearby Wayside Calvary and statue of Our Lady, as places of pilgrimage, prayer and worship. Although the church is is now structurally unsound and unsafe for public entry, it remains a focus of the annual pilgrimage.
The Trust Archive
There is a collection of Father Ignatius Memorial Trust archive material at Abergavenny Museum. We have also made some documents and articles available on the website on the Documents page.
How you can help
We aim to keep the memory of Ignatius alive and to continue the annual Pilgrimage. You are warmly invited to make a donation and to become a Friend of the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust by subscribing to the Trust Newsletter.
(See the Help Us page).
Father Ignatius of Llanthony
Fr Ignatius OSB (Revd. Joseph Leycester Lyne, 1837-1908) was a prominent figure in the Catholic Revival which swept the 19th century Church of England. As a young man he resolved to restore to it the monastic life lost at the Reformation, and devoted the rest of his life to this aim.
Learn more
Facebook Posts
Tuesday 2 October: Hon Sec Peter Davies (R) and Hugh Allen at Llanthony Prima, photographed by Donald Kerr of Otago University, New Zealand, who has been in this country for the past few weeks researching the life and works of WILLIAM ARDERNE SHOULTS, polymath bibliophile and as FR CYRIL occasional chaplain to Fr Ignatius's communities -- see 'New Llanthony Abbey' p 135 and provisional update in the current Trust newsletter.
www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=654&v=St82KMRYh_MKaroussos Archives offers three Byzantine Icons, painted by Iannis Karoussos, to the Shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury in England, in order to cherish the Ec...
The annual pilgrimage to Llanthony and Capel-y-ffin took place on Saturday 18 August. The sun shone, and some fifty people attended the Eucharist at the former and Evensong at the latter, where our guest preacher was Abbot David Cuthbert Brogan of Farnborough. Here are a few photos of the event, with some others taken the preceding day at our Hon Sec's house in Abergavenny -- my rather indifferent copies of pictures in a historic album, recently received from a former occupant of Maes y ffin, home of Fr Ignatius's adopted son "Brother David". The originals seem to have been taken between 1915 and 1923, i.e. after the demolition of the corrugated iron nunnery on the south side of the church and before the arrival of Fr Joseph Woodford and his companions, one of whose first actions was the removal of the ivy propagated by Ignatius from what had earlier been planted on his parents' grave in Margate.
The 2018 Fr Ignatius Trust Newsletter is now available; copies from Hon Secretary Dr Peter Davies (43 St Helen's Road, Abergavenny NP7 5YA; email: daviespll@hotmail.com).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb0rzJZhJvg&index=7&list=PLIr-CGWTcQCeemN5FSACfanQagDzM7gIT&t=0sA highly atmospheric period piece, with views of the abbey church interior before restoration work began in the late 1960s. Unfortunately it perpetuates the myth that Fr Ignatius spent the winter of 1869-70 with another monk in a hut on the hillside (he didn't; he sent the notorious misfits Fr Philip and Bro Serene), and its account of the 1880 Apparitions is equally misleading.In the 1960's the Welsh writer and broadcaster Gwyn Thomas made a series of short films about life in South Wales. Many of the films have been lost but some ...