COGGESHALL, Essex was founded by King Stephen and Queen Matilda in 1140. It was the last of the Savigniac daughter houses to be founded before the order was merged with the Cistercians in 1147. The colonisation of the house by monks from Savigny was only natural considering that the house of Savigny was situated within King Stephen’s county of Mortain. Stephen was count of the Norman county of Mortain for several years before St. Vitalis died in 1119. It is not now known whether they Stephen and Vitalis ever met, although it is thought that the degree to which Stephen and Matilda were drawn to the reformed monasticism of Savigny suggests that Stephen had at least fallen under the influence of the founder. The medieval gate-chapel is now used as a parish church. The chronicle of the theologian Ralph, who became abbot of Coggeshall in 1207, is considered as a primary source for many of the events of King John’s reign
Coggeshall itself was situated within the honour of Boulogne in England, lands which Queen Matilda had inherited from her father, Count Eustace of Boulogne. The foundation was most likely to have been Queen Matilda’s project. Coggeshall’s earlier years were overshadowed by a long-running law suit which resulted from its attempts to remove a settlement from one of its estates. During the peasants revolt of 1381 some of the insurgents entered the abbey and carried away goods and charters, writings and other muniments, which seems to suggest the abbey was not particularly popular at the time. After the house was surrendered, it was acquired by Thomas Seymour, who demolished the church, and by 1581 the estates were held by the Paycock family who built the house which still stands to the eastern side of the east range.
STRATFORD LANGTHORNE, or Stratford, was founded in 1135 by William de Montfichet, and, like Coggeshall, was a daughter-house of the abbey of Savigny in Normandy. Like all the other houses of the Savigniac Order, Stratford Langthorne was absorbed into the Cistercian Order in 1147. It is thought that the original site was at Burstead, and that the house moved to its present site c. 1140. The house quickly acquired great wealth and, owing to its proximity to London, became one of the most important Cistercian houses in England. Stratford’s property included almost a score of manors and some 1500 acres of demesne in West Ham alone. In 1267 Henry III received the pope’s legate at Stratford Abbey and made peace with the barons there. During the Peasants Revolt of 1381 the abbey was amongst the religious houses targeted by the insurgents; its goods were stolen and its charters burned. In the late fourteenth century the abbey was damaged by flood and Richard II took it upon himself to restore the buildings. The site is still occupied by industrial lands and there are no visible remains, although a stone carving and a window from the abbey still survive in West Ham Parish Church.
The abbey of Our Lady and St. Chad at BUILDWAS was founded in 1135 by Roger de Clinton, bishop of Coventry (1129-48).(1) It was originally a Savigniac community colonised by monks from Furness, and when it became Cistercian, along with all the other Savigniac houses in 1147, new buildings were erected. Situated on the bank of the Severn it was close enough to the Welsh border to suffer from what was called the ‘levity of the Welsh’. This meant that the abbey suffered occasionally from raids carried out by the Welsh princes and their followers. In 1350 the abbot was kidnapped and imprisoned by raiders from Powys, and in 1406 its estates were laid waste by the followers of Owain Glyndwr. BUILDWAS Abbey remained a small and relatively unimportant community which derived its income from collecting the tolls on the bridge on the River Severn. By the late fourteenth century the total number of monks had fallen to four. The numbers had risen again to twelve by the early sixteenth century but, when Buildwas was dissolved in 1536, only seven monks remained in the house. The remains of the church are among the best preserved twelfth-century examples of a Cistercian church in Britain.