Lesnes Abbey
An abbey of Augustinian canons in Kent, now a ruin in southeast London, which the bishop of Rochester, visiting it in the years of the Black Death, found so ruined by bad management that people thought it could never be restored.
Today: Lesnes Abbey ruins, Abbey Wood, London, England
The Plague in the Bishop of Rochester’s Household
William Dene (attributed), History of the Church of Rochester, printed in Henry Wharton’s Anglia Sacra (1691) · soon after the events of 1348–1349
Episcopus Roffensis Abbatias & Monasteria de Liesnes & Mallyng visitans, invenit ea ita destructa per malam diutinam custodiam; quòd durante isto saeculo usque ad diem judicii creditur ea non posse reparari.
The Bishop of Rochester visited the abbeys of Liesnes and Mallyng. He found them so ruined by years of bad management that people believed they could not be restored in this world, not before Judgment Day.