Elstow Abbey

Elstow Abbey was a women's monastery in Elstow, Bedfordshire, England, guided by the Rule of St Benedict. The monastery was founded c. 1075 by Judith, Countess of Huntingdon, who was a niece of William the Conqueror. The monastery was dissolved in 1539 under Henry VIII -- surviving into the second round of dissolution due to the great wealth of the community.

An extensive and carefully-excavated assemblage of human remains from the women's monastery at Elstow (Bedfordshire, UK) is currently under study in our St Andrews laboratory. We have begun macro-skeletal analysis and workwear in the teeth of over sixty sets of remains excavated under the direction of David Baker during the 1960s and 1970s. The Elstow human remains are on loan to the project via the Higgins Bedford museum in Bedford. Once this initial phase of analysis is completed, we will begin to sample dental calculus and bone to conduct dental calculus analysis (micro-debris analysis and proteomics).

The written record for Elstow is relatively strong, with several types of written evidence (especially charters) for the activities of the monastery's nuns. These are supplemented by the survival of some evidence of scribes at the monastery (both entries on mortuary rolls and two excavated styli, which may date to the medieval monastic period).