A monastery is known to have existed at Bermondsey before 715 AD, when it was a
Surrey colony of the important
Mercian monastery of
Medeshamstede, later known as
Peterborough. Though surviving only in a copy written at Peterborough in the 12th century, a letter of
Pope Constantine (708–715) grants privileges to a monastery at
Vermundesei. This monastery most likely continued, probably as a
secular minster, at least until the 9th-century
Viking invasions. Nothing more is heard of any church at Bermondsey until 1082, when, according to the "Annales Monasterii de Bermundeseia", a monastery was founded there by one Alwinus Child, with royal licence. Given the trend to the continuity of sacred sites, this church most likely was founded on the site of the earlier monastery. This foundation possibly was a direct successor to the church last mentioned in the early 8th century. Alwinus Child's new monastery, dedicated to
St Saviour, is presumably identical with the 'new and handsome church' which appears in the
Domesday Book record for Bermondsey, in 1086. In effect, Domesday Book clarifies the "Annales"' mention of royal licence, since it records that the estate of Bermondsey was then held by King
William the Conqueror, a small part being also in the hands of
Robert, Count of Mortain, the king's half brother, and younger brother of
Odo of Bayeux, then earl of Kent. Royal support for the new foundation continued with King
William Rufus' gift of the royal estate at Bermondsey, in either 1089 or 1090, and through further grants made, for example, by King
Henry I in the 1120s and 1130s. The counts of Mortain maybe also maintained an interest in the new monastery, since
Count William of Mortain became a monk there in 1140. Alwinus Child's only recorded gift to the new monastery was 'various rents in the city of London', and these may be represented in Domesday Book by mention of 13
burgesses there paying 44
d annually to the estate at Bermondsey. The new monastery was established as an
alien Cluniac priory through the arrival in 1089 of four monks from St Mary's of
La Charité-sur-Loire, apparently at the invitation of Archbishop
Lanfranc of Canterbury. These were Peter, Richard, Osbert, and Umbald, with Peter becoming the first prior. The monks began the development of the marshes surrounding the abbey, cultivating the land and embanking the riverside into a Priory Close spanning 140 acres of meadow and digging
dykes. They turned the adjacent tidal inlet at the mouth of the
River Neckinger into the priory's dock, and named it
St Saviour's Dock, after their abbey. This provided a safe landing for Church dignitaries and goods below the traditional first land crossing, the congested stone arches of
London Bridge. The church remained a Cluniac priory until the late 14th century. In 1380, Richard Dunton, the first English prior, paid a fine of 200
marks (£133 6s 8d) to have the Bermondsey monastery's establishment naturalised: this protected it from actions taken against alien properties in time of war, but it also set the priory on the path to independent status as an abbey, divorced from both La Charité and Cluny, which it achieved in 1390.
Bermondsey itself, however, long remained little more than a high street ribbon (the modern Bermondsey Street), leading from the southern bank of the Thames, at Tooley Street, up to the abbey close. Nearby land was owned by the
Knights Templar, and other ecclesiastical properties stood not far away. In the
Archbishop of Canterbury's manor of Southwark, wealthy citizens and clerics had their houses, including the priors of
Lewes and
St Augustine's, Canterbury, and the abbot of
Battle. Moreover, in 1353
King Edward III built a manor house close to the Thames in
Bermondsey. == Royal connections ==