They came to the attention of Thomas Weld, a Catholic recusant and philanthropist who distinguished himself in relieving the misfortunes of refugees of the French Revolution and who provided the monks with land on his estate in East Lulworth, where they could establish a monastic community.

Mount St Bernard Abbey was founded in 1835 on 227 acres (0.92 km2) of land[2] purchased from Thomas Gisborne MP, by Ambrose Lisle March Phillipps, a local landowner and Catholic convert who wanted to re-introduce monastic life to the country.

"The whole of the buildings", wrote Pugin, "are erected in the greatest severity of the lancet style, with massive walls and buttresses, long and narrow windows, high gables and roofs, with deeply arched doorways.

A makeshift two-bell turret was fashioned over the eastern end of the unfinished church so that the monks could be called to office, and a small quatrefoil window of the Virgin and child by William Warrington, a medieval-revival stained-glass artist, was inserted under the gable.

[11] According to an early publication with a foreword by Abbot Burder (1852), this site would have been the preferred location for the original monastery designed by Railton, but soon after the purchase of the land, there had been some dispute as to whether the rock belonged to the monastic grounds or to the parish of Whitwick.

Huge opposition to the founding of the monastery had been mounted by Francis Merewether, Vicar of Whitwick, who preached and wrote prolifically against the revival of 'Romanism'[12][13] and parish authorities had apparently "spoke of holding parties of pleasure upon the rock and of over looking the monks".

During cultivation of the monastery estate, on 2 June 1840, Lay Brother John Patrick McDanell, together with labourers William Hickin and Charles Lott, unearthed an urn with their plough, which contained approximately 2000 Roman coins, "conglomerated together, and covered with the green oxide of copper".

Luigi Gentili, a priest associated with De Lisle's mission, wrote that there were extremes of rural poverty to be found in Leicestershire that could not be matched, even in the most poverty-stricken parts of his native Italy.

[clarification needed] In 1862 John Rogers Herbert painted Laborare est Orare (To labour is to pray), which depicted "the monks of Saint Bernard's Abbey, Leicestershire, gathering in the harvest of 1861, assisted by some of the boys from a neighbouring reformatory in their care".

[38] Guinness mentions his first stay at the abbey in his 1986 autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, in which he describes attending a dawn mass: Arriving at the large, draughty, austere white chapel, I was amazed at the sights and sounds that greeted me.

The great doors to the East were wide open and the sun, a fiery red ball, was rising over the distant farmland; at each of the dozen or so side-altars a monk, finely vested but wearing heavy farmer's boots to which cow dung still adhered, was saying his private Mass.

Through the Evening Mail, a petition was organised and two months later the newspaper reported: "Many of the monks at Mount St. Bernard Monastery, in Charnwood, have taken a lifelong vow of silence, and therefore they are unable to speak their views on the proposed Forest motorway, which would pass within half a mile of their peaceful home.

[45] The role of acceptance that the abbey has played in offering succour to the troubled and those in need of friendship was emphasised by reports in 1998 that the footballer Justin Fashanu had sought solace there in the final days of his life.

Members of the 'Looking For Richard' team, headed by Philippa Langley claimed that the University of Leicester had agreed to release the remains once scientific testing had been finished, so that they might be placed in a "prayerful environment", prior to reburial.

[65] The small, founding colony of monks at Mount St Bernard was originally led by Dom Odilo Woolfrey, who also assumed the duties of parish priest for the neighbouring Catholic churches of Grace Dieu and Whitwick.

A member of the community wrote: "Never will the writer of these lines forget the fervent manner in which he thanked God, a few moments before his death, for having called him to the holy state of religion, and for having given him the grace of perseverance to the last hour of his life".

[5] Fortunately, the monastery's revival continued under his successor, Dom Malachy Brasil - the third Irishman to rule the abbey, who took charge in 1933, elected as abbot by the monks of Mount St Bernard on the basis of his excellent reputation, gained as prior of Roscrea.

This and other noteworthy achievements of Dom Malachy is described in his obituary, written by the monks of Nunraw: "His first move, we were informed, was to call in an outsider to improve the chant and discharge of the divine office.

[5] Dom Malachy resigned in 1959, having celebrated his silver jubilee as abbot and spent his final years at the Trappist monastery of Sancta Maria Abbey, Nunraw in Scotland, where he died and was laid to rest in 1965.

Following a short sabbatical in India, Father Joseph assumed duties as the Abbey guestmaster[79] The subsequent abbatial election was inconclusive and Norwegian-born Dom Erik Varden was appointed Superior ad nutum (i.e. with the agreement of the community).

Mount St Bernard Abbey maintains an ecumenical link with the Anglican Cistercians, a dispersed and uncloistered order of single, celibate and married men that is officially recognized within the Church of England.

David John is an accomplished liturgical designer and sculptor whose other works include the statue of Our Lady in bronze at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and the altar, tabernacle and lectern in the English College Chapel in Rome.

This was later donated to the chapel of Ratcliffe College[117] and was eventually replaced by an Allen electronic organ, presented by the mother of Father Mark Hartley, an organist at the abbey for many years, on the occasion of his silver jubilee, in 1962.

The outstanding costs of transporting the organ by lorry from Bavaria were aided by an inaugural concert performed by Joseph Cullen, sometime organist of Westminster Cathedral and Jennifer Smith (soprano), a professor of the Royal College of Music, following a special service on 8 June 2014.

The original sandstone plaque is badly weathered and largely illegible and a more modern replacement has been fixed beneath it, at the instigation of Gerard de Lisle (another descendant), to perpetuate the inscription.

[129] The present "Gill-style" sculptures surmounting the calvary rock are the work of Father Vincent Eley, 1965,[4] and represent the crucified Jesus, mounted on a cross of concrete, with images of Our Lady and St John on either side.

De Lisle had the chapel built after being inspired by similar examples of wayside shrines in Bavaria and it was designed to form part of a devotional walk on his land, which comprised fourteen Stations of the Cross and a Calvary along the route.

[131] The chapel contains "two most exquisite and remarkable figures executed by the Austrian sculptor, Johann Petz [de] (1818-80) of Munich, and representing in painted wood the Blessed Virgin weeping over her divine Son, who has just been taken down from the Cross, the nails being laid at His feet".

[133] By the middle of the twentieth century, the chapel had succumbed to vandalism, having stood derelict for many years and in 1955, at the suggestion of Captain Ambrose de Lisle, it was dismantled and reassembled on its present site by the monks of Mount St Bernard.

[136] This house, which stands close to the staggered cross-roads at Oaks in Charnwood, has an ornamental tiled roof and chamfered stone door and window surrounds, features which are thought to lend weight to the suggestion that it was designed by E. W. Pugin.