Are you there God? It's us monks

NEWLY rediscovered music sung by medieval monks will echo evocatively through Buckland Abbey for the first time in five centuries.

- Annunciata Elwes

The Cistercian abbey in Devon's Tavy Valley, which once thronged with resident ‘white monks’ (in undyed habits) and choirboys who sang for hours every day, in between farming and woodwork, has been silent since the Dissolution.

However, thanks to a collaboration between the National Trust and the University of Exeter, supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, some original music will return, when the British Library loans its Buckland Book. From about 1450, it contains details of the monks’ daily rituals, as well as, unusually, a collection of music that was copied in during the Tudor era. Barely any music performed by medieval monks survives.