Partly through donations and partly through land reclamation work in the dunes and polders, the monastery developed extensive landholdings on which the lay brothers reared sheep, producing wool for the cloth trade.

A dependent house was established at Eastchurch, in Kent, to export wool from England, but was later sold to Boxley Abbey.

New buildings were begun in 1214 and completed in 1237, to house a community of approximately 400 monks and lay brothers.

The church was vandalised by Protestant iconoclasts in 1566, and the monastery was sacked by Calvinist rebel forces in 1578.

After decades in temporary accommodation the community was established in Bruges in 1627, in a house that had been the refugium of Ter Doest, which had been re-amalgamated to Ten Duinen in 1624.