Buckland Abbey: Lost chants heard after 500 years

Buckland Abbey’s Lost Medieval Chants Resurrected

Buckland Abbey in Devon, originally founded in 1278 as a Cistercian monastery, fell silent after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1541). Once “thronged” with resident monks and choirboys who sang for hours every day, the abbey ceased its sacred services in 1539. Today, it is a National Trust site, preserving a medieval church, a massive tithe barn, and a Tudor country house (later the home of Sir Francis Drake). In the Middle Ages, monastic life at Buckland centred on the Divine Office – a cycle of daily prayers – sung in unison using plainchant. With the Dissolution, Buckland’s library was dispersed, and almost all English monastic music was lost or destroyed.

Timeline of Buckland Abbey’s key dates:

1. 1278: Buckland Abbey is founded as a Cistercian monastery by Amicia, Countess of Devon.

2. 1539: The abbey is dissolved under Henry VIII’s Reformation, ending centuries of monastic life.

3. 1580: Sir Francis Drake purchases Buckland Abbey. c. 1581–c 1596: Drake and his household occupy the house intermittently while he continues naval voyages (Drake died in 1596).

4. 1720s–1753: The Buckland Book (see below) surfaces in the Harley family’s library and is sold in 1753 to the British Museum (later British Library).

5. 2024: Historian Prof. James Clark (Univ. of Exeter) discovers hidden medieval chant pages in the Buckland Book.

6. 2025: The British Library loans the Buckland Book back to Buckland Abbey for an exhibition, and the University of Exeter Chapel Choir transcribes, records, and performs the long-lost chants.

The Buckland Book: A Hidden Customary

Buckland Abbey’s daily rituals were recorded in a lavishly decorated 15th-century manuscript now known as The Buckland Book. This parchment, customary (c. 1450), contained the liturgical instructions (prayers and rituals) for each service the monks must sing or perform. Crucially, it was long held at the British Library (Harley Collection) after passing through post-Dissolution owners. In 2024, while researching the abbey’s history, Prof. James Clark spotted something extraordinary: tucked into the back of the Buckland Book were several leaves of medieval music notation. These had been added in the early 16th century and include a rare set of plainchant melodies. In other words, a book that should contain only rubrics and prayers unexpectedly hides an entire section of original chants.

• Customary (c.1450): The Buckland Book was compiled around 1450 as a guide for the monks’ daily office and feasts.

• Hidden Plainchant: Its final pages include about a dozen plainchant pieces (Latin texts with neumatic musical notation), an unusual addition for a customary.

• Multi-Source Compilation: The chants were added in the early Tudor era and appear to be drawn “from many different sources” rather than following the rigid medieval liturgical calendar.

Clark recalls that at first he “didn’t hold out a great deal of hope” when examining the British Library volume. Then he found these musical fragments “shoved into the back of the book”. In fact, of over 800 medieval English monasteries, virtually no chant music survived in their libraries. That makes the Buckland Book’s musical appendix a true treasure. It is now on loan to Buckland Abbey for the exhibition “Opening the Buckland Book: Music and community in a Tudor monastery” (July–October 2025), the first time it has returned home in nearly 500 years.

A Unique Sequence of Chants

Plainchant (also called plainsong) is monophonic liturgical singing – one melody sung in unison by choir or congregation. The Buckland chants are in this style, but they are highly unconventional. Instead of following the standard Office (Matins, Vespers, etc.), the monks compiled a free-form sequence of prayers and songs. As National Trust researcher Daisy Gibbs explains, the collection’s compiler was “unusually creative, pulling together words and music from many different sources”.

The surviving texts confirm that these chants are fervent supplications: each piece “asks for God’s mercy, forgiveness and protection from harm”. They convey a strong sense of anxiety and fear, more intense than typical seasonal chants. All evidence suggests the chants were once performed as a single series, perhaps as a complete service for an emergency. Gibbs notes, “they look as though they were once sung as a complete sequence, perhaps to help the monks through a crisis of some kind”. In short, the Buckland collection seems to be a bespoke set of chant remedies for a troubled moment.

• Non-standard Ordering: Unlike the fixed canon of the Office, these chants are not tied to specific hours but were arranged in a unique order.

• Supplicatory Texts: Every piece is a plea to God – for mercy, deliverance or healing – reflecting collective worry.

• One Continuous Performance: Internal evidence suggests the chants were meant to be sung together as a single ceremony, perhaps during a crisis.

• Exceptionally Rare: Hardly any monastic chant collections survived the Tudor Reformation, making Buckland’s set one of the very few windows into pre-Reformation monastery music.

Sweating Sickness: A Possible Context

One leading theory is that the Buckland chants were created in response to the sweating sickness epidemics that plagued Tudor England. Sweating sickness was a mysterious and often-lethal disease that struck suddenly (often killing victims within 24 hours) and repeatedly during the late 1400s and 1500s. Oddly, it seemed to target healthy young and middle-aged adults rather than the very old or very young. For example, in the late 1520s, Thomas Cromwell – Henry VIII’s chief minister – lost his wife and two daughters to sweating sickness.

The tone of the Buckland chants fits this context. Music historian Daisy Gibbs notes that the prayers all share “a real feeling of anxiety and fear,” as if sung amid a health crisis. It is plausible that the monks composed or compiled these extra chants to pray for protection during an outbreak. As National Trust sources explain, “the music may have been intended as a response to the sweating sickness, which broke out repeatedly in Tudor England”.

• Sweating Sickness (1485–1551): A fast-acting epidemic of Tudor England, causing high fever, headache and sweating, often fatal within a day.

• Who It Affected: Strikingly, it killed men in their prime – including members of the elite (Cromwell’s family, for instance).

• A Musical Response: The emotional pleas in the chants suggest they may have been sung as prayers for deliverance during one of these deadly outbreaks.

Robert Derkeham: Buckland’s Choir Master

In an extraordinary stroke of luck, the Buckland Book can be linked to a known historical figure. The abbey’s choir master and organist in the 1520s was Robert Derkeham. Clark’s research uncovered Derkeham’s employment contract (dated 1522), which shows that he was hired to train the monks and choirboys in more elaborate polyphonic singing. Derkeham evidently worked at Buckland until its dissolution in 1539.

This attribution is remarkable because it is extremely rare to connect a surviving manuscript of medieval chant with a named musician. As the National Trust notes, “It’s exceptionally rare to be able to connect a book of medieval music … with the specific musician who performed it”. It suggests that the monks invested in high-quality music: Derkeham’s contract aimed to take the “ragged” choir and make it “something more professional”.

• Robert Derkeham (b. c.1500): Served as Buckland’s master of music (organist and choirmaster) from 1522 until the abbey closed.

• Professional Training: His contract emphasises improving the singing of a dozen monks and local choirboys, reflecting the abbey’s musical ambitions.

• A Rare Link: Connecting an individual to a medieval music manuscript is almost unheard of – Buckland’s book is one of the few where we know who sang the music.

Reviving the Chants: Transcription and Performance

In 2025, researchers and musicians teamed up to bring these silent pages back to life. Music specialists carefully transcribed the ancient chants from their neumatic notation into modern musical scores. Plainchant notation of this kind records melody but gives no explicit clues about rhythm or dynamics. As Exeter’s Director of Chapel Music, Michael Graham explains, “we had to make decisions about how the pieces should sound… This is one of the most interesting, and also most challenging, parts of performing music that’s over 500 years old!”. In other words, the choir interprets tempo, phrasing and expression by informed guess, relying on performance practice knowledge.

By early summer 2025, the University of Exeter Chapel Choir had recorded the Buckland chants. The recording will serve as a haunting soundtrack for the new exhibition “Opening the Buckland Book” at Buckland Abbey. Choir director Graham says the students “relished the opportunity to explore this rich vein of music and bring it to life in our chapel”. The recorded voices of today’s choristers will thus echo the prayers of the long-gone monks.

Key steps of the revival project included:

• Transcription: Scholars decoded the chants from the manuscript’s neumes into modern notation for performance.

• Interpretation: Since the medieval notation lacks rhythm marks, the choir director and singers had to decide tempo and flow for each chant.

• Recording: The Exeter Chapel Choir (pictured above) recorded all the pieces; this recording will play throughout the Buckland Abbey exhibition.

• Live Performance: The choir will sing the music live in Buckland’s medieval Great Barn on 16–17 August 2025. (These performances are funded by an Arts & Humanities Research Council Impact Accelerator Award.)

Significance: Recovering a Lost Tradition

The revival of Buckland’s music is more than a novelty; it sheds light on England’s vanished monastic culture. As Prof. Clark observes, finding this collection lets us “recover something of [the monasteries’] sound”. Before the Reformation, every part of England had monasteries “dedicated to creative music-making and performance,” Clark notes. Buckland’s chants give scholars a rare glimpse into that lost world. They help us understand not only the musical skills of the monks but also the spiritual life of their community – the fears they faced and the ways they sought divine help.

Having searched the archives for traces of England’s lost abbeys, it is very exciting to recover something of their sound.”
— Professor James Clark, University of Exeter

This project also highlights the value of scholarly collaboration. The National Trust (custodians of the site), the University of Exeter, the British Library, and funding from the AHRC all came together to make these discoveries public. As one researcher puts it, the team feels “privileged” to bring the long-silent voices of Buckland’s monks back to life. (Daisy Gibbs and colleagues are still investigating what happened to the Buckland Book between 1539 and its reappearance in the 18th century – perhaps a monk saved it – but that story remains a mystery.)

In summary, the story of Buckland Abbey’s chants reminds us that historical treasures may lie hidden in plain sight. Through careful research, the prayers of 500 years ago have become audible again, linking medieval worshippers to the present. As the exhibition and concerts will demonstrate, the past is never truly silent.