The resident community consists of monks (bhikkhus), nuns (siladhara), and male and female postulants who live in accordance with strict traditional codes of celibacy, together with a volunteer support staff and visitors.

[2]Amaravati formally opened in 1985, the site having been purchased from Buckinghamshire County Council by the English Sangha Trust the year before.

Its configuration of several large huts of Canadian cedar, built in extensive grounds for military purposes during World War II, had formerly been a residential school.

In Autumn 2010 he handed over to the English monk Ajahn Amaro, who for the preceding 15 years had been co-abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery in Redwood Valley, California.

The mediaeval convent of St Margaret's, abolished by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was for centuries just 400 yards along the lane.