Erdington, Abbey of
ERDINGTON, ABBEY OF
Former benedictine monastery, now a Redemptorist house, in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham, England, Diocese of Birmingham. Founded in the parish of Father D. H. Haigh in 1876 as a priory of the German Abbey of beuron, Erdington became an abbey dedicated to Thomas of Canterbury in 1896. In 1899 its first abbot, Dom Anskar Hockelmann (d. 1943), was appointed. There were few English vocations, and the policy of the English government toward citizens of enemy countries living in England resulted in the removal of Abbot Anskar and the appointment of an English abbot, Dom Francis Izard, from 1915 to 1919. Twenty-eight of the monks chose to retire to Germany in 1919, leaving only 11 monks at Erdington. Authorization was obtained from Rome for the sale of the abbey, which was bought by the Redemptorists in 1922; Dom Anskar transferred the Benedictine community to St. Martin of weingarten in Württemberg.
Bibliography: Annales O.S.B., 28–34 (1920–26) 42–44, 240–242. j. u. saxton, "Die Wiederbelebung der Benediktinerabtei Weingarten," Benediktinische Monatsschrift, 4 (1922) 316–320; Bygone Erdington (Birmingham 1928). h. dauphin, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–) 15:688–689.
[v. i. j. flint]