Mystery · Medmenham · Legendary
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A riverside abbey where England's elite played at being wicked monks.
Private, don't visit
Medmenham Abbey is a private house with no public access, so please do not trespass. Check before you go if hoping to glimpse it from the river.
Down by the river here, England's elite once dressed as monks. Over their door they carved a motto that meant: do whatever you like.
On a bend of the Thames below Medmenham stands a house built on the remains of a small Cistercian abbey. In the mid-1700s Sir Francis Dashwood rented it as the summer meeting place of his brotherhood, the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, nicknamed the Monks of Medmenham and often confused with the Hellfire Club. Over the main entrance they placed Rabelais' motto, 'Fay ce que voudras', do what you will. Members held mock religious ceremonies, and gossip suggested much worse. By the 1870s the poet Mortimer Collins was calling Medmenham famous for a real ghost, and spooky tales grew with the tourists.