More information : (Sited to SK 45801555 from O.S. 6" 1887)
Mount St Bernards Abbey in the Charnwood Forest was the first
permanent Post Reformation monastery to be founded in England. The
monks, of the Cistercian order, had the responsibilities of running
the largest reformatory in the country put upon them by their abbott in 1856. The inmates were youths from the Irish community in Liverpool, some of the roughest people around. Their rebellious behaviour became too much for the monks and local community to cope with and the reformatory closed down in 1885. The ruins can be seen some half mile northwest of the present Abbey. (1)
Mount St. Bernard's Reformatory (Disused). (2)
Founded in 1835, the idea came from Ambrose Lisle March Phillips of
Grace Dieu Manor who bought and donated the land. His own
architect at Grace Dieu, William Rialton, designed a little Tudor-
style monastery which opened in 1837. When it was replaced by the new monastery, (SK 41 NE 11), in 1844, it was used as a grange for guests until 1856 when it became the reformatory (some of which survives). (3) |