Last Saturday some thirty or so members of the society enjoyed an outing to Buckinghamshire and Berkshire arranged by Michael Yelton. I shall post some pictures of the buildings we visited over the next few days. The final stop was at Burnham Abbey, home of the Society of the Precious Blood, an enclosed order founded in 1905. The nuns occupy the medieval domestic buildings of the former house of Augustinian Canonesses, suppressed at the Dissolution. At one time this was one of the most ultramontane communities in the Church of England, although nowadays it is far more restrained. Nevertheless, the watch before the Sacrament, which is kept in a very English hanging pyx today, is still a major feature of the liturgical regime. Personally I found the chapel, which was re-ordered a few years back, very attractive in ts simplicity. It occupies the old Chapter House.
