The impetus for the foundation of St. Cecilia's in fact came from Dom Guéranger's chance contact with Jenny Bruyère, a girl whom he was asked to teach in preparation for her first communion.
The French anti-religious laws of the early 20th century forced the whole community into exile in England, to the forerunner of the present St Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, where on 18 March 1909 Mother Cécile died.
Unlike many women's religious houses of the time, the spiritual practice of St. Cecilia's Abbey centered from the beginning on its foundation on the liturgy and on Gregorian chant rather than on the then customary usual methods of prayer.
The dynamism of this monastic renewal and the influence of the foundress enabled the women's branch of the Solesmes Congregation to found numerous other daughter-houses, many of them still in existence, in France and in other countries.
The abbey's influence extends beyond its own Congregation, as the constitutions written by Mother Cécile Bruyère, with the support of Dom Guéranger, for her nuns have had an effect on many other Benedictine houses.