An Independent Worth

The years following the Second World War were boom years both for the Downside community and for its schools. By the mid-fifties there were over ninety monks and some 750 boys in the two schools at Downside and Worth. On September 10, 1967, Abbot Christopher Butler launched Worth as an independent Priory and nineteen Downside monks volunteered to be part of the new venture. Dom Victor Farwell was nominated as the Prior and was re-elected three times to remain Worth's superior for more than thirty years.

In keeping with the thinking of the time, the only possible major work for an English Benedictine monastery was education. The new Worth community therefore started a senior school which began with thirty fourteen-year-olds in September, 1959 and for the next nine years this occupied all the energies of the community. But in 1968, under the inspiration of the Second Vatican Council, and of the missionary traditions of the English Benedictines, the community decided to do what it could to help the Church in the Third World. A small band of monks went to the remote Apurimac valley in Peru and slowly built up a flourishing mission and farm. Later they moved to a new and poor area of Lima where they founded the parish of San Benito. There they built a monastery, a large church, a health centre, and several Mass centres to serve 80,000.

The Easter Vigil at Worth

The Home Mission

The home mission in its turn was not neglected. In 1964, the community took over the pastoral case of Catholics in four nearby villages. The Worth Conferences also started in 1964 and sought to make the new theological thinking associated with Vatican II accessible to the laity. This programme of adult education continued for fourteen years. In 1971, in what was to prove one of the most exciting and fruitful works undertaken by Worth, young people were invited to share the experience of community prayer and life.What developed was the Worth Lay Community. This particular seed has taken vigorous root and has brought hundreds of young and not-so-young people to live and pray at Worth. These have enriched the monastic community with their own insights and spiritual gifts.

In 1975 the inspiring Abbey Church, designed by Francis Pollen, was consecrated. Another enrichment to the variety of religious life at Worth was the establishment in 1977 of a House of Studies for junior sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady of Grace and Compassion. In 1984 they moved into a purpose-built convent near the Abbey Church. In 1983 the Community decided to found an experimental monastic presence in inner-city London and acquired the redundant Anglican church and vicarage of St.Peter's, East Dulwich. This, too, developed into a centre of prayer and spirituality for many.

A New Era

In some ways 1988 was the end of an era for Worth. Abbot Victor resigned because of ill-health and died shortly afterwards. The community elected as his successor the superior of the Lima foundation, Dom Dominic Gaisford. Abbot Dominic had been Abbot Victor's choice as first Headmaster of the new school in 1959, and had later been Novicemaster and Co-ordinator of the Lay Community before going to Peru. He started a process of discernment which led the community in 1990, albeit very sadly, to close the house in Lima and withdraw the monks from Dulwich, and concentrate all "monkpower" at Worth. The insights and gifts Worth has received from both are now being used to help our work in the School, Lay Community and Parish, and to develop new links with the diocese. In 1994 Abbot Dominic died peacefully. The community began their deliberations and elected Dom Stephen Ortiger. In 2002 Father Christopher Jamison became the new Abbot of Worth Abbey. He handed over as headmaster of Worth School to Peter Armstrong, the first lay Head of this Benedictine school. He leads the monastery's continuing works with strength and love.