16.—Nores on Bermonpsey ABBEY. 
By N. F. Rogarts, F.G.S. 
(Read November 15th, 1904.) 
Some recent excavations on the site of Bermondsey Abbey led 
to an offer by Mr. C. Morgan Smith to lend to our Loan Museum 
some specimens of pottery, &c., which had been found during the 
work of building some houses for the South Eastern Railway. 
At the same time Mr. Smith kindly offered to place any informa- 
tion he possessed at my disposal if I would write some notes upon 
the specimens and other discoveries, an offer I was very glad to 
avail of. 
It would, I thought, be of interest to this Society if I could 
at the same time give a little information about the Abbey of 
Bermondsey, respecting which I then had no knowledge, an 
ignorance which possibly I shared with other members. I have 
accordingly collected some information relative to this ‘‘ forgotten 
Monastery,’ as Sir Walter Besant called it, and beg to submit a 
few particulars which should be of interest to our Society in view 
of the very intimate connection which existed between the Abbey 
of Bermondsey and the parish of Croydon. 
Bermondsey, probably best known to most of us by its market 
gardens, now almost extinct, and its tanneries with their dis- 
tinctive aroma, as we pass them on the railway, is so different 
from what it was even one hundred years ago, that I think 
we should first try to realize the original environment of the 
Monastery. 
Founded very shortly after the Norman Conquest in a.p. 1089, 
the Priory of Bermondsey stood about half a mile south of the 
Thames, half a mile from where now stands London Bridge, and 
half a mile from the Kent or Dover Road. The conventual 
buildings stood on a flat meadow through which ran sundry - 
watercourses, giving the neighbourhood the name of Bermond’s 
Hy or Island. The etymology of Bermond is disputed, and need 
not detain us, but the Ey is doubtless the Saxon word for island. 
We must remember that the south side of the river was more 
or less a marsh, probably often flooded, the only road being the 
causeway leading from the bridge near St. Mary Ovyerie’s to 
where St. George’s Church now stands, from which branched off 
the Dover Road, whilst the causeway itself continued straight on 
to the higher ground of Clapham. 
: The only approaches to the Monastery were by the present 
_ Tooley Street leading from the bridge to the Monastery, or by 
