The Cistercian Abbey of the Blessed Virgin
Mary at Sibton lay in East Suffolk, six miles
north-west of the market town of Saxmundham. It was colonized by a group of monks
from the Abbey of Warden in Bedfordshire in the year 1150, which house was in turn
founded from the Yorkshire Abbey of Rievaulx.
The site is by the banks of the River
Yox, which is a relatively small river in a broad,
shallow glacial valley cutting through the eastern edge of the Suffolk clay plateau. The
site is in private ownership and there is little to be seen of the remains of the abbey from
the road.
The founder was William de Cadomo, third
son of a local Norman lord, Robert son of
Walter, who was reputed to be the brother of William Malet, tenant in chief of the manor
of Sibton at the time of the Domesday survey. Robert married Sibilla, daughter and heir
of Ralph de Cheyney, and their descendants took the maternal name. A subsequent
patroness of the Abbey was Margaret de Cressy, nee Cheyney, daughter and heir of
William, and one by whom the original grants were substantially augmented.
Sibton was the only Cistercian house in
Suffolk and a sister house of Sawtry in
Huntingdonshire (1149) and Tilty in Essex (1153). It had wide possessions in East
Suffolk and Norfolk.
A description of grange system has come
from a study of the abbeys surviving
manuscripts, owned by the local Scrivenor family. carried out by A.H. Denney. In
particular, this research has revealed that the monks were in the main stream of national
agrarian developments.
At the dissolution its annual income was
valued at £250, £58 more than Tintern. With no
large buildings to maintain this is a measure of the prosperity of four centuries of mixed
farming in Suffolk.
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