St Michael zine

Talk Walk Talk

Sites of Religious Significance

St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough

Tuesday 9th June 2026.

St Michael’s Abbey is tucked away out of sight on the Hampshire-Surrey border.

Following the Franco-Prussian war in and the subsequent collapse of the Second French Empire in 1870, the Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie fled to England where they lived in exile in Chislehurst, Kent. After Napoleon's death in 1873, in 1880, Eugénie purchased the Farnborough Hill house and estate. She sold off her huge collection of jewellery to fund the building of St Michael’s Abbey in 1881 as an Imperial Mausoleum for her husband and their only son the Prince Imperial, who was killed in 1879 while fighting for the British in the Anglo-Zulu War. Eugenie died in 1920 aged 94. All three are now interred in the abbey crypt in in large granite sarcophagi gifted by Queen Victoria, who was a close friend of the Empress.

In 1895, the Empress Eugénie invited a group of French Benedictine monks to live and work at the abbey. In 1947, these were joined by a group of monks from Prinknash Abbey, near Gloucester to ensure the continuity of monastic life at the abbey. A small number of monks live and work there still today.

A group of photographers from the RPS TWT group visited the abbey on 9th June. Here is a selection of our photographs.

Walk Leader: Jeff Kelsey Front page image: Suzy Courtnage