The small community is known for its liturgy (which is sung in Latin and Gregorian chant), its pipe organ, and its liturgical publishing and printing.

[2] The Abbey Church itself was designed in an eclectic flamboyant gothic style by the renowned French architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, and it contains the thigh bone of St Alban, the largest relic of the saint in England.

Although installed after the death of Cavaillé-Coll, it bears his name rather than that of his successor, Charles Mutin, and the internal works are of a quality which identifies this model with the highest standards of workmanship of the high days of that company.

The community, once famed for its scholarly writing and musical tradition of Gregorian chants, became depleted in number by 1947, and most of the remaining monks dispersed to houses of the Solesmes Congregation, in particular Quarr Abbey.

It moved into the care of St Michael's Abbey in 2007 for a probationary period pending a final decision on its future.

A statue of Saint Joseph in a side chapel to the right of the high altar in the monastery church initially belonged to the Mill Hill Fathers, founded by Herbert Vaughan in 1866.

At Vaughan's request, Pope Pius IX granted a canonical coronation for the statue, conducted by Henry Cardinal Manning on the occasion of the dedication of the chapel of St Joseph's College on 13 April 1874.