Hailes Abbey was founded in 1246 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of King Henry III, after he survived a shipwreck and vowed to build a monastery in thanksgiving. Twenty monks and ten lay brothers arrived from Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire to establish the community. The abbey was dedicated on 5 November 1251 in the presence of the King himself and thirteen bishops. But it was Richard's son Edmund who transformed Hailes from a modest monastery into one of England's greatest pilgrimage sites. In 1270, Edmund brought back from the Crusades a phial said to contain the blood of Christ, authenticated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. A magnificent new east end was built to house the relic, modelled on Henry III's rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. For nearly 270 years, pilgrims travelled from across England to venerate the Holy Blood. Geoffrey Chaucer referenced it in The Canterbury Tales. Then came Henry VIII's Reformation. In 1538, commissioners seized the phial and declared its contents to be 'honey clarified and coloured with saffron.' The Abbot, Stephen Sagar, hoping to save the abbey, admitted the relic was a fake. It did not work. On Christmas Eve 1539, Sagar and his 21 monks signed the surrender. The abbey was stripped and the buildings left to decay.
“Geoffrey Chaucer referenced it in The Canterbury Tales.”
