Denny Abbey is a former abbey near Waterbeach, six miles (10 km) north of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, England. The site, on an ancient road between Cambridge and Ely, was settled by farmers as early as the Roman period. The Domesday Book said that it was owned by Eddeva in 1066, and subsequently by Alan, 1st Earl of Richmond.
A group of Benedictine monks, governed from Ely, moved here from their waterlogged monastery at Elmeney (a vanished settlement about a mile to the northeast) in the 1150s, at the suggestion of Duke Conan IV of Brittany. They built a church, Denny Priory, which opened in 1159. The crossing and transepts are the only parts of the original Priory that remain today. In 1169 the monks returned to Ely and the site was handed to the Knights Templar. The Templars built a number of additions, including a large Norman-style arched doorway and a Refectory. By the 1290s the Knights had lost their power, and in 1308 King Edward II had the entire order arrested and imprisoned, confiscating their property. Denny was given to the Knights Hospitallers, who took no active interest in the property. In 1324 it was taken over by the Crown.
In 1327 King Edward III gave the Priory to a young widow, Mary de Valence, Countess of Pembroke (died 1377), who built accommodation for herself there. She gave the remainder of the Priory to a Franciscan order of nuns, the order of Saint Clare, also known as the Poor Clares, who were moved from their flood-prone Priory in the nearby village of Waterbeach. Denny Priory was expanded into an Abbey during this period, with comfortable quarters for the Countess above spartan accommodation for the nuns. The abbey was closed in 1539, shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and was taken by the Crown. Its transept and choir were retained as a farmhouse, and the Refectory as a barn, but the nave was demolished. In 1628 the abbey passed into private ownership. Pembroke College, Cambridge, which had also been founded by the Countess of Pembroke in 1347, bought the site in 1928.
John George Witt, the well-known barrister and Q.C./K.C. of Victorian and Edwardian England, was born at Denny Abbey in 1836. He died in London in 1906.
The Abbey, Nuns Refectory and surrounding land remained a farm until they were leased in 1947 to the Ministry of Works, which later transferred them to English Heritage. The abbey, partially restored in the 1960s, is open to the public alongside the Farmland Museum, who manage the Abbey on behalf of English Heritage.
The Farmland Museum, which opened in 1997, has a shop, cafe and an Education Centre, running courses for local schools. Farm buildings and a 17th century stone barn have been converted into displays of local history and farming, including a 1940s farm labourer’s cottage, a 1930s village shop, displays on local crafts and skills. Many of the old farm tools and machinery came from a museum at Haddenham which closed. The whole site, known as Farmland Museum and Denny Abbey, is open from April to October, and there are regular special event days.