St Mawgan Monastery was a monastery at

St Mawgan St Mawgan or St Mawgan in Pydar ( kw, Lanherne) is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The population of this parish at the 2011 census was 1,307. The village is situated four miles nor ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, UK, originally of Celtic monks and after the Norman Conquest of Cluniac monks.

History

A Celtic monastery was established in the 6th century. It was dissolved in the 11th century. The monastery became the Manor of Lanherne by 1086 as recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

. It then became a manor house for the

Arundell family The Arundell family of Cornwall are amongst the few Cornish families of Norman origin, and there are still fewer of French extraction who have for so long a period (at least five or six centuries) been, like them, traceable in that county. Lanhe ...

and by 1360 it was their main residence. In 1794 the estate was given for use as a convent for English

Carmelite , image = , caption = Coat of arms of the Carmelites , abbreviation = OCarm , formation = Late 12th century , founder = Early hermits of Mount Carmel , founding_location = Mount Car ...

nuns from Antwerp. The entrance to the convent is Elizabethan. The house had been empty for some time, and had been used by smugglers to store goods. The convent was dedicated to St Joseph and St Anne. It houses a relic of the skull of the martyr

Cuthbert Mayne Cuthbert Mayne (c. 1543–29 November 1577) was an English Roman Catholic priest executed under the laws of Elizabeth I. He was the first of the seminary priests, trained on the Continent, to be martyred. Mayne was beatified in 1886 and canonise ...

. In the Summer of 2001 the nuns of the Carmel of Lanherne relocated to amalgamate with the Carmel of St Helen in Eccleston. In 2015 the St Helens Carmel closed because of the “age and ill health” of the community and the shortage of vocations. The members of the community dispersed to other monasteries. The enclosed Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate took up occupancy in 2001. As of 2010, the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate at Lanherne Convent were still at the site.

References

Monasteries in Cornwall Cluniac monasteries in England {{UK-Christian-monastery-stub