The foundation by Count Ricdag of the first religious house at Lamspringe for Augustinian canonesses is conventionally dated around 850.

The convent received generous support from the bishops of Hildesheim, and became one of the wealthiest in the diocese during the 14th century.

However, they were unable to take possession and begin work on the monastery until the early 1640s, after the end of the Thirty Years' War.

From 1671 they ran a good though small school for English Catholic boys, mostly from Yorkshire and the north, necessitated by England's then anti-Catholic laws.

Unlike the other English monasteries in exile, Lamspringe was a large abbey rather than a small priory, and was wealthy, with wide estates.

Plunkett's relics are now at Downside Abbey, along with a reliquary containing Hereford's skull and much of the monks' library.

The library was dispersed; it had contained as its most famous item the St. Albans Psalter, which is now at the basilica of St. Godehard, Hildesheim.