Burford Priory is home to a Community of Benedictine monks and nuns. Visitors are welcome
Burford Priory in Burford, Oxfordshire, is home to a community of Benedictine nuns and monks. Benedictine followers take St Benedict of Nursia’s model of monastic life and employ it in their daily lives. St Benedict, an Italian saint (480 – 547 A.D,) introduced a way of life called "St Benedict's Rule" for monks and nuns living in a community under the authority of an abbot or abbess, with the monks and nuns as Brothers and Sisters. Under the "Rule", the monastic day is organised into regular periods of prayer, both communal and private, alongside times for spiritual reading, manual labour, intellectual work and sleep.
The monks and nuns in Burford Priory live a common life of prayer, manual work and study, under Abbot Stuart Burns (OSB). Their aim is to try to create a peaceful and still atmosphere in which to become open and receptive to the presence of God.
This is the principal work of the Community, but alongside prayer and silence the monks and nuns carry out tasks in the grounds of the Priory. They undertake general maintenance work of the grounds and buildings. The grounds include a wooded area and a large, organic kitchen garden, as well as formal, planted gardens.The Community also make crafts such as incense, block-mounted icons and prints, handcrafted icons and Chinese brush-painted cards and these are sold in order to generate income to provide equipment for a range of manual work for the monks and nuns.
The Priory seeks to be a place of encounter and reconciliation and so the early concern of the Community was to pray for Christian unity. The Community has links with other communities, including Baptist, Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic communities. This promotion of unity among the world’s Christian churches has widened to also include dialogue with people of other faiths.
Individuals and small groups who wish to come on retreat in the environment of recollection and silence in which the monks and nuns live are welcome. Guests can be day-visitors or can take up temporary residence in the Community.