Venue

Wolvesey has been an important residence of the wealthy and powerful Bishops of Winchester since Anglo-Saxon times. Standing next to Winchester Cathedral, the extensive surviving ruins of the palace date largely from the 12th-century work of Bishop Henry of Blois. The last great occasion here was on 25 July 1554, when Queen Mary and Philip of Spain held their wedding breakfast in the East Hall.

Wymondham Priory - it was raised to the status of an Abbey a mere ninety years before its suppression - was founded in 1107 as a community of Benedictine monks. The founder was William D'Aubigny, sometimes referred to as d'Albini, Chief Butler to King Henry I whose widow, Alice of Louvrain, was later to marry William's son.

The building was on an ambitious scale. Stone was shipped across the English Channel from Caen, in Normandy, and the original Nave - a scaled-down version of the Nave of Norwich Cathedral - was twelve bays long.

Mount Saint Bernard Abbey is situated in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. An area of particular natural beauty in the very heart of England. It is home to an order of Cistercian Monks of the Strict Observance (Trappists).

At Mount Saint Bernard Abbey today, the monks are involved in the running of:
- a 200 acre beef farm
- the production of pottery
- bookbinding
- building and maintenance
- upkeep of a vegetable garden and orchard
- beekeeping
- running a shop and guesthouse

The abbey is open daily until 7.30pm.

The delightful village of Castle Acre boasts an extraordinary wealth of history and is a very rare and complete survival of a Norman planned settlement, including a castle, town, parish church and associated monastery. All this is the work of a great Norman baronial family, the Warennes, mainly during the 11th and 12th centuries.

Castle

The castle was founded soon after the Conquest by the first William de Warenne and you can still view an immense system of ditched earthwortks – perhaps the finest village earthworks in England.