Teds Shorts - A Series of Short Stories

The Bells of Netley Abbey 

Chapter 1 - The Founding 

The tide crept along Southampton Water with the slowness of deliberate thought, brushing the reeds and mudflats as if testing the patience of the earth itself. A low mist rose from the Solent, coiling across the half-cleared fields where Netley Abbey would take form, shrouding the labourers in a silence deeper than that of the morning. Dawn broke hesitantly, pale as bleached parchment, revealing men wielding hammers and saws, the cadence of their work mingling with gull cries that sliced the mist like shrill, accusing fingers. The land seemed new, fragile, as though creation itself paused to witness the beginnings of something sacred yet precarious. 

Bishop Peter des Roches stood on top of a rise, his fur-lined cloak snapping in the wind. Age had bent him, stiffened his spine, but it had not diminished the fire in his sharp grey eyes. Netley Abbey would be his last offering, a sanctuary raised to God from the salt-marsh and clay, a monument to piety and power. Yet even as he blessed the ground, a tremor of unease stirred in him. He had seen enough of men to know that holiness was seldom untainted by ambition. 

“May the stones endure longer than I, Father Prior,” he murmured. 

“They shall, my lord,” replied the Prior of Beaulieu, bowing low. His calm obedience belied a shadow of apprehension. “God willing, they shall outlast us all.” 

Des Roches’ lips curved faintly. “God’s will is one thing. The king’s is another.” 

He thought of King Henry’s temper, fickle, unpredictable, consuming,-  dangerous, and felt again that brittle tension between devotion and politics. His gaze drifted to the mist-shrouded masons, carving pale sandstone, each block a testament to human diligence and pride. The stones would speak long after his voice had faded. 

By mid-morning, the mist thinned, revealing Hugh of Amesbury, master mason, moving among the labourers with commanding authority. His hands, scarred from old campaigns in Poitou, bore witness to a life of endurance. At his side worked Osric, a young apprentice, whose dark hair fell into his eyes as he laboured to please. Behind them, Brother Aelfric, responsible for the records and sanctity of the work, murmured prayers under his breath, wary of the tide, the mist, and the hearts of men. 

Minor quarrels flared, as they often did in places where sweat met sanctity. A hammer vanished, then reappeared. A gull lay dead among the reeds, pale as a spectre. Osric’s temper burned bright beneath Hugh’s stern correction. 

“You have strength, boy, but no patience,” said Hugh, steadying a block. 

“I do all I can,” Osric muttered. “And still it is never enough.” 

Brother Aelfric intervened softly. “The land listens, lads. Treat it with respect, lest it remember your anger.” 

The Bishop moved among the foundations, sprinkling holy water and murmuring blessings. Silence fell in the shadow of the sacred, but unease lingered. The mist curled like an unseen observer. The tide whispered warnings. The air carried a note of menace. 

That evening, as dusk gathered and the first owls began their cries, Osric lingered near the tree line, humiliated and furious. Hugh called after him, but the boy’s figure dissolved into fog, as if the mist itself had swallowed him whole. 

That night, the tide whispered. The wind shifted. The Abbey seemed to hold its breath. 

A distant, muffled cry echoed through the reeds. A shadow moved unseen and somewhere, across the Solent, a bell tolled softly- a note of sorrow that would linger for centuries. 

By dawn, Osric’s body lay face down near the foundations of the scriptorium, throat cruelly cut, tools beside him. The ground bore no marks of struggle. Hugh found him, pale and trembling, and stumbled to the Prior’s tent. 

“I… I do not know,” he whispered. “He was gone when I sought him. The mist hid everything.” 

The Prior ordered a quick burial, and Bishop des Roches, weakened by fever, sprinkled holy water with a faltering hand. “Let no man question the will of God,” he said, but his voice trembled. “Let the work continue.” 

Yet as the first stones rose from the marsh, the earth remembered. 

Chapter II. The Inquiry 

Rumour spreads faster than truth. Within days, the masons spoke of curses, of the land’s resentment. Osric had been young, quick to anger, but not unloved. Some said Hugh’s discipline had turned too harsh. Others whispered of jealousy, of something seen that should not have been. 

The Prior summoned Hugh to his chamber. 

“You were the last to see him?” 

“I was,” Hugh said, eyes downcast. “He was angry. He spoke of leaving. Of… injustice.” 

“Was there more?” 

Hugh hesitated. “He had been digging beneath the foundation lines. Said he’d struck something, a stone, carved, not of our quarry.” 

The Prior’s gaze sharpened. “And what became of it?” 

“He said he would show me come morning. But…” Hugh’s voice failed. “He never did.” 

Brother Aelfric, who recorded all that passed, felt a chill coil through his heart. That night he returned alone to the foundations, lantern trembling in his grasp. He searched where Osric had worked. After a while, his foot struck something hard, a buried shape, smooth as bone beneath the mud. 

He scraped gently until he saw it: a fragment of stone, curved and etched with faint, spiralling marks. Not Latin, nor any scripture he knew. The design seemed to twist beneath the light, almost alive. Aelfric’s breath quickened. He wrapped the fragment in linen and carried it to his cell. 

The next day, he copied its markings in ink, intending to show them to the Prior. But by dawn, the fragment was gone. 

Weeks passed. The Abbey rose, its bones of stone set into the marsh’s yielding flesh. The masons sang to steady their rhythm, and yet the air felt heavier, as if the tide itself grew reluctant to come ashore. 

Brother Aelfric took refuge in his writing. He recorded Osric’s death in the annals, simply, dispassionately but beneath, in a private hand, he wrote of the stone. Of the whisper he thought he heard as he turned it in his palm, a voice older than prayer. 

The Prior read the official entry, nodded, and dismissed him. But that night, a messenger rode from Beaulieu Abbey to Southampton. The Bishop, though gravely ill, was informed. Within days, he returned to Netley, pale as parchment, attended by two Cistercian brothers unknown to any of the others. 

“Some things,” he told the Prior in private, “are best sanctified by silence.” 

The fragment, he said, was “a remnant of heathen deceit,” and must never be spoken of again. The Bishop ordered the workmen to dig no deeper than commanded, and a new foundation stone was laid over the place where Osric had died. More Holy water was sprinkled; more prayers were sung. The labourers obeyed, but they crossed themselves more often. 

Aelfric, however, could not forget. He copied his notes into a small vellum codex and hid it within the scriptorium wall. 

Chapter III - The Second Death 

Winter came early. Frost glistened along the reeds. The Solent darkened beneath low clouds. The Abbey’s shell stood half-finished, its cloisters open to the sea wind. One morning, Brother Anselm failed to appear for Prime. 

By evening, they found him at the edge of the marsh, half-buried in silt, his hands clasped as if in prayer, his lips frozen into silence. No wound was visible. Only his eyes, wide and glassy, seemed to speak, of terror, or revelation. 

The Prior forbade further speculation, but the brothers whispered: Anselm had seen something beneath the foundations. He had spoken of shapes moving when the tide fell, of light where none should be. 

Aelfric searched his cell and found his own notes gone. 

He went to Hugh that night. The mason sat alone, sharpening his chisel. 

“Tell me true,” Aelfric said, “what lay beneath the ground before the Abbey?” 

Hugh’s jaw tightened. “I saw naught, save stone. But the Bishop fears something. I have seen his men digging by moonlight.” 

“For what?” 

“For what they buried, perhaps,” Hugh muttered. “Or what they could not.” 

The next morning, Hugh was gone. 

Chapter IV. The Revelation & Suppression 

Spring brought brief reprieve. The Bishop died in Winchester, his final blessing unfinished. His seal passed to new hands, but the shadow of Netley remained. 

Brother Aelfric, gaunt and fevered, resumed his work, but the peace of the cloister had gone. One night he followed torchlight into the half-built crypt. There, beneath the altar stones, he found the Prior and the two Cistercian brothers at work. They had prised open a pit sealed with mortar. Within it lay not relics, but bones, human, long buried, arranged in a circle around a broken disk of stone. Upon the disk, the same spiral marks writhed in torchlight. 

“Cover it,” said the Prior harshly. “Seal it before dawn.” 

“But Father,” whispered one of the brothers, “these bones—” 

“They are of those who came before. The Bishop knew. The Abbey must stand above them. Holiness must rule what was profane.” 

Aelfric’s breath caught. The pit was an older grave, perhaps of those who had worshipped here before Christ was named. Osric had uncovered it. For that, he had died. 

He fled before he was seen, heart pounding. That night he wrote everything he knew, the murders, the relic, the Bishop’s orders and sealed it in his codex. He hid it beneath the flagstones of the scriptorium. 

When dawn came, the crypt was sealed. The Prior declared that all records of Osric’s death, Anselm’s disappearance, and the Bishop’s secret orders were to be destroyed. The Abbey’s chronicle was rewritten: “In the year of our Lord 1239, the foundations were blessed without impediment, and all labours prospered under the grace of Heaven.” 

Brother Aelfric vanished soon after. Some said he went to Rome; others that he was taken by the tide. Only the empty place in the scriptorium marked his passing. 

Chapter V: The King’s Reward, 1536 

Three centuries passed. The stones of Netley Abbey had absorbed generations of devotion, toil, and sorrow. The tide rolled, indifferent to human ambition, brushing the foundations steeped in prayer and blood. 

In spring, royal commissioners arrived bearing Henry VIII’s seal, heavy with authority. “By order of the King’s Majesty,” one read, voice resonant, “this house is surrendered.” The monks knelt, silent tears tracing gaunt cheeks. The weight of centuries of service dissolved under a crown’s decree. 

Sir William Paulet, soon to be Marquess of Winchester, inspected the ruins, imagining halls for courtly revels where monks had sung. He saw stone and timber as an opportunity, blind to memory, blind to blood beneath the mortar. Yet even he felt, faintly, the Abbey’s persistence, whispers of work, echoes of Osric’s death. 

Laborers cleared debris, dismantled the choir, and prepared foundations for new purpose. Yet the Abbey’s voice persisted: chanting carried on the wind, footsteps in corridors, faint markings in mortar — reminders that memory cannot be erased. 

By year’s end, Netley had been transformed. The sacred became secular. But the jagged mark in the doorway to the scriptorium, the whisper of a child’s cry, and the pulse of stone remained, a silent testament to sin, endurance, and secrecy. 

Chapter VI: The Romantic Ruin, 1755 

Years turned to centuries. The Abbey stood in majesty, then fell into ruin. Stones sank into the marsh. Travellers spoke of whispers in the mist, of voices from beneath the floor.  Netley Abbey now lay beneath ivy, a ruin inspiring melancholy and reflection. Artists and poets came to record it’s arches, trace it’s scars, and capture its echoing beauty. Horace Walpole walked the nave, calling it “not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise.” 

Visitors paused where the faintest indentation in mortar hinted at Osric’s presence. The Abbey, though abandoned by monks, remained alive with memory. Poets composed; sketchers captured arches with trembling reverence. Even though the tide participated, its rhythm was a dialogue with the stones. 

Among those who lingered was Jane Austen, notebook in hand, imagining heroines moving among shadowed corridors, feeling the Abbey’s weight of history and hidden sorrow. The ruins had become a stage, a vessel for imagination and remembrance, but beneath beauty lingered the truth: Netley’s foundations were soaked in secret grief. 

Chapter VII: Present Shadows 

When the ruins were later surveyed, a cracked foundation stone was found, bearing faint spiral carvings unlike any Christian symbol. Scholars dismissed it as weathering. The Church archives held no record of Osric, or of Hugh of Amesbury. 

But in 1892, during the restoration of the north transept, a small vellum codex was found sealed in a niche of the old scriptorium wall. Its ink had faded, but a single line remained legible in Latin: 

“They built God’s house upon the bones of another god and buried the truth with blood.” 

The discovery was swiftly removed to diocesan custody. Within weeks, it vanished from the record once more. When questioned, the monks of Beaulieu claimed no knowledge of it. 

Now, the Abbey stands silvered by centuries, arches open to sky, ivy crawling across walls, trees shading cloisters. Tourists wander where monks once prayed, children dart between columns, laughter mingling with the past. 

Barbara Ward, historian and chronicler, walks slowly through cloisters, noting faint carvings, mossed seams, and subtle vibrations in the stones. She pauses at the jagged mark in the footings of the Scriptorium, tracing it with gloved fingers, feeling the weight of centuries. Abbey’s breath is in the tide, the wind, the stone, patient, and observant. 

Through archival study, Barbara uncovers fragments of long-hidden documents: Hugh’s account, letters from Bishop des Roches, and a confession by a fellow apprentice long dead. The mystery unravels: Osric had been murdered not in mere anger, but to keep a secret. The crime had been concealed by fear and piety, leaving the Abbey to bear the silence. 

Barbara arranges a small ceremony at the foundation. Candles are lit, prayers whispered and the story spoken aloud for the first time in centuries. The tide laps quietly, the wind stirs through ivy, and from the ruins, a faint tolling resounds, a bell that has not rung for five hundred years. 

Osric’s presence, long hidden in mortar and memory, is acknowledged. The Abbey exhales; shadows lift. The past, reconciled, rests at last. 

The tide continues its slow, deliberate whisper along Southampton Water, brushing the reeds as if testing the patience of the earth itself. The land remembers; the Abbey endures and somewhere beneath its ruin, the truth still breathes. 

In that moment, Netley Abbey speaks no longer in whispers of grief, but in quiet, enduring redemption: a testament that even stone, tide, and centuries may heal when truth is finally told. 

Author’s Note 

Carvings at the foot of the monastery's scriptorium entrance inspired this fictional story but based on historical fact.  

Bishop des Roches (d. 1238) was a statesman, soldier, and Bishop of Winchester. He was influential in both ecclesiastical and royal circles, though records of his personal temperament and private concerns are fragmentary. Netley Abbey was founded shortly after his death by monks from Beaulieu, and while historical accounts note the abbey’s construction, few details survive about its earliest years. 

Netley Abbey was one of the last monasteries founded before the Dissolution under Henry VIII. He closed monasteries across England, redistributing their wealth and lands. 

Sir William Paulet (c. 1483–1572) was a statesman and later Marquess of Winchester. As Royal Aget, he oversaw Abbey’s dissolution and transformed it into a mansion in which he resided. 

The building was occupied until 1704 but fell into ruin, becoming a celebrated romantic ruin for 18th Century figures such as Horace Walpole, Thomas Grey, and Jane Austin who, allegedly found inspiration for her novel Northanger Abbey. The site is now owned by English Heritage and is free to visit.