Titchfield Abbey

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Titchfield Abbey was founded in 1232 as a house of Premonstratensian canons, one of only a handful of that order in England. The abbey was established by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and stood on low-lying ground beside the River Meon to the west of Titchfield village. The canons farmed the surrounding land and maintained a modest religious house until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After the Dissolution in 1537, the abbey was granted to Thomas Wriothesley, later first Earl of Southampton, who converted the buildings into a grand Tudor mansion known as Place House. Wriothesley built a gatehouse through the nave of the abbey church, creating one of the most distinctive conversions of a religious house in England. The third Earl of Southampton, patron of William Shakespeare, lived here, and there is a tradition that some of Shakespeare's plays were first performed at Place House. The ruins are managed by English Heritage and are free to visit. The remains of the abbey church, the cloister ranges, and the Tudor gatehouse are clearly visible, and interpretation panels explain the site's complex history from medieval monastery to Elizabethan great house.