The foundation at Farnborough owes its genesis to the Empress Eugénie, and to her desire to establish a
religious house at the Imperial Mausoleum completed at Farnborough in 1887.
For eight years the white-habited Nobertine Canons celebrated the daily Masses and chantry prayers. The
canons were French, coming from the Praemonstratensian Abbey of St Michel de Frigolet. The superior of
the community, Fr Joseph Ibos, a staunch and vocal supporter of the French Republic, did not endear
himself to the foundress and benefactress. In 1895, the canons were invited to leave Farnborough. Some
returned to France and some to the other house of their Order at Storrington in Sussex.
The political vicissitudes of nineteenth century France were, in the 1890s, making life very difficult
for the religious orders there, and particularly difficult for the French Benedictines whose aristocratic
background and historical researches were little loved by the anticlerical authorities. Eugénie’s request
for monks of the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Solesmes was successful for two reasons. The acceptance of a
house outside of France was timely and prudent. That Farnborough should be so near to the British Library
and the Oxford Bodleian Library must have seemed providential, for the offer came at a time when the
Prior of Solesmes, Dom Fernand Cabrol, was sharing with the abbot his dream of a monastic foundation
dedicated to the study and the practice of the Roman Liturgy. Benedictine life commenced at Farnborough
in 1895.
The entire Solesmes community would eventually be exiled to the Isle of Wight in 1901. The face of Europe
and the temperature of France was so changed by the First World War that Solesmes was able to return to
France in 1922. The monks of Farnborough spoke little English, and so recruitment was increasingly
problematic. In 1947 Abbot du Boisrouvray, the second Abbot of Farnborough decided that it was impossible
for the community to continue as a French house and so negotiations commenced with the Abbey of Prinknash
near Gloucester.
The French monks were as determined as the English that there should be no break in the monastic
observance. Dom Cabrol had promised at the funeral of the Empress in 1920 that the Benedictines would
remain faithful to their promises to her. Five English monks joined the remnant of the French community
in 1947. Some of the French community returned to France or to other monasteries, others remained. The
last French monk Dom Léopold Zerr died in 1956.
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