Denny Abbey is a previous abbey near Waterbeach, north of Cambridge in
Cambridgeshire, England. The site is on an ancient road between Cambridge and Ely, settled by farmers as early as the Roman period. A group of Benedictine monks, governed from Ely, moved here from their waterlogged monastery at Elmeney (a vanished settlement to the northeast) in the 1150s, at the proposal of Duke Conan IV of Britanny. They built a church, Denny Priory, which opened in 1159.
 

Denny Abbey

The crossing and transepts are the only parts of the original Priory that remain today. In 1169 the monks returned to Ely and the site was handed to the Knights Templar. The Templars built a number of additions, including a large Norman-style arched doorway and an infirmary. By the 1290s the Knights had lost their power, and in 1308 King Edward II had the entire order arrested and imprisoned, confiscating their property. Denny was given to the Hospitallers, who took no active interest in the property.


Later King Edward III gave the Priory to his relative, Mary de St Pol, Countess of Pembroke (died 1377), who built accommodation for herself there. She gave the remainder of the Priory to a Franciscan order of nuns, the order of Saint Clare, also known as the Poor Clares, who were moved from their flood-prone Priory in the nearby village of Waterbeach. Denny Priory was expanded into an Abbey during this period, with comfortable quarters for the Countess above spartan accommodation for the nuns. The abbey was closed in 1539, shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and was taken by the Crown. Its transept and choir were retained as a farmhouse, and the refectory as a barn, but the nave was demolished. In 1628 the abbey passed into private ownership. Pembroke College, Cambridge, which had also been founded by the Countess of Pembroke in 1347, bought the site in 1928.


The abbey and its land remained a farm until they were given in 1947 to the Ministry of Works, which later transferred them to English Heritage. The abbey, partially restored in the 1960s, is open to the public alongside the Farmland Museum, who manage the Abbey on behalf of English Heritage. The former farm buildings have been converted into a museum of local history and farming, which opened in 1997.