Daylesford Abbey is a Roman Catholic monastery of Canons Regular of Premontre, located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.

Pennings was a Norbertine Priest sent from Berne Abbey, Netherlands, who founded the Premonstratensian Order in the United States.

Rather than spending his hours in Church, Norbert would go on adventures and hunts, until his conversion experience in 1112, when he become totally committed to the Christian Faith.

The success of Norbert's mission in Antwerp and across the Low Countries, led to the foundation of Norbertine Abbeys in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Centuries later, Norbertine Priests led by Bernard Pennings, came from Berne and established an Abbey in Wisconsin.

In 1898, St. Joseph Parish, in West De Pere, Wisconsin became affiliated with the Norbetines and served as the Abbey Church for decades.

[4] In the 1950s, a growing American Norbetine community, having outgrown both the Abbey in De Pere and the various priories it had, sought to create new a new Foundation (which would become Daylesford Abbey) and to expand the Norbertine Presence from Wisconsin to the East Coast of the United States, in Delaware and Philadelphia.

In 1932, Abbot Pennings sent a handful of Norbertines from Wisconsin to open a school that became Archmere Academy in the Delaware Valley.

In 1934, following the success of Archmere Academy in Delaware, the Norbertines were asked to open an archdiocesan high school for boys in South Philadelphia.

In 1963, the Community moved from the Cassatt Estate to Pinebrook, its present site, an 88 acre farm in Paoli.

It reflects the Liturgical Movement and the reforms of the council, as interpreted with the norms of Catholic tradition in mind.

The design is based on the footprint of centuries-old European Norbertine and Cistercian monasteries, the materials utilized in constructing it were selected for their permanence.