The Holy Trinity at Savigny

In 1129 Richard de Granville granted his fee, situated on the west bank of the river Neath, to the Norman abbey of Holy Trinity at Savigny for the foundation of a new monastery. A year later Abbot Richard (d. 1145) and his twelve monks arrived from Savigny and a new community at Neath was formed: it was the second daughter-house of Savigny in England and Wales. The monks soon found that their lands were far too scattered to be managed properly and during the 1190s a plan was put forward for the monastery to move to the site of its property at Exford in Somerset. The plan was thwarted when, in 1198, the abbey of Cleeve was established barely ten miles from the site at Exford. Thus, instead of moving, the community decided to put its efforts into consolidating its lands closer to home. This eventually paid off and by the end of the thirteenth century Neath Abbey was one of the wealthiest houses in Wales.The numbers increased and after the house was burnt down in 1224 by Morgan ap Owen it appears to have been entirely rebuilt for twenty-four monks and forty to fifty lay-brothers. Between 1280 and 1320 the twelfth-century Romanesque church was replaced by a new Gothic construction. The scheme attracted the attention of King Edward I and, on a visit to Neath in 1284, he presented the abbey with a beautiful canopy, intended for the High Altar.

The surrounding area was once all forest. St. Vital retreated as a hermit into these woods. Then, in 1112, he founded an abbey. Savigny, a great and prestigious abbey, was the mother of the Benedictine reform in Normandy. Before adopting the Cistercian Observance in 1147, it had spread throughout the duchy-kingdom, with more than 30 houses in both England and Normandy. Savigny… But then the Revolution struck, in such a destructive manner! It is said that Henry II Plantagenet once stayed here and that St. Louis once passed through these doors.

However, these pillars are now held up by the echo of prayers... The memory of the site belongs to the monks whose names have not been passed down over the centuries; only their vow of humility and religious fervour is known to us. Here, they served God. Here, they came to bring forth the fruits of the Earth. To better understand and discover how they lived, continue your visit in Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët. The Centre for Sacred Art opens the doors of the abbey in the form of a scale model.