Cerne Abbey

The abbey was founded in 987 by Æthelmær the Stout. Ælfric of Eynsham, the most prolific writer in Old English, spent time at the abbey as a monk and teacher. King Cnut plundered this monastery during an attack upon the town, but afterwards became a benefactor of it. By the time of the Domesday Book, the abbey had added substantially to its endowment. to the veneration of Saint Eadwold of Cerne, a 9th-century hermit reputedly a brother of Edmund, king of East Anglia. Eadwold lived as a hermit on a hill about four miles from Cerne. The later history appears to have been relatively uneventful; A History of the County of Dorset says that its history is "perhaps the least eventful of any of the…