Mount St Bernards Abbey

In 1835 Ambrose Phillips De Lisle purchased 227 acres of wild uncultivated woodland in Charnwood Forest which he donated to the Cistercians. Mount St Bernards Monastery became the first only male Cistercian monastery in England post reformation. The regime was based on the strict observance of La Trappe which involved early rises, abstention from meat and practising of strict silence. From the humble beginnings of one brother living in a four roomed cottage, the monastery rapidly expanded resulting in the opening of a larger building and chapel by Dr Walsh on the 11 October 1837.

In the same year the monastery received £2000 from another benefactor, the Earl of Shrewsbury. The money was used to commission Augustus Welby Pugin as architect for a much enlarged monastery. In 1848 by brief of Pius IX Mount St Bernards Monastery became an Abbey and Father Bernard became the first Mitred Abbot in England since the reformation when he was consecrated on the 18 february 1849.

The largest juvenile reformatory in the country in the 19th Century, and the one with the roughest reputation, was located at the abbey. It was the initiative of the Abbot, Dom Bernard Butler, and it opened its doors in 1856, just two years after the Youthful Offenders Act of 1854. The Whitwick Reformatory had a short but dramatic and chequered history.