Buckfast Abbey in Buckfastleigh, South Devon
Buckfast Abbey in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England is one of a small number of active monasteries in Britain today. It was founded in 1018, dedicated to Saint Mary, and run by the Cistercian order from 1147 until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Today it is a Benedictine foundation. Between 1536, when it was dissolved, and 1882, the abbey lay in ruins. Then a group of Benedictine monks arrived, lived among the ruins, and gradually re-built the abbey much as it had been. The church itself was restored by the monks themselves, in 1907–1908, under Abbot Anscar Vonier. The abbey has close links with Germany, where many of the monks came from. Nowadays the abbey is more or less self-supporting, selling wine, honey and beeswax and making tourists welcome. Its most successful product is Buckfast Tonic Wine, a strong tonic wine which the monks began making (to a French recipe) in the 1890s. The strength of "Buckfast", and its misuse, have proved to be a controversial issue for the abbey. Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany; died in 1996) was in charge of the Abbey's beekeeping, but the bees were being decimated by "Isle of Wight" disease, later called "acarine" disease, after the acarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, killing off whole colonies. Brother Adam began importing resistant stock from other nations, creating a vigorous parasite resistant hybrid honeybee known as the Buckfast bee among beekeepers. The grounds around and inside the Abbey The outside of the Abbey is heavily landscaped to be more user friendly. There is a conference and seminar centre, as well as a fully functional restaurant, called The Grange. On the west side of the Abbey are two gardens with a variety of plants in them, ranging from herbs to poisonous plants (these are not reachable). Behind the public area is an enclosed, mostly landscaped garden for the monks. It consists of several areas with paths winding between them. A spectacula
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Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
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