Monks from the monastery of St Gregory’s, Douai, in Flanders, came to Downside in 1814. In 1607 St Gregory’s was the first house after the Reformation to begin conventual life with a handful of exiled Englishmen. For nearly 200 years St Gregory’s trained monks for the English mission and six of these men were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Two of these monks, Ss John Roberts and Ambrose Barlow, were among the forty English and Welsh Martyrs canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

Driven from France at the Revolution, the community settled for twenty years at Acton Burnell, Shropshire, before finally arriving at Downside in 1814.

The Monastery was completed in 1876 and the Abbey Church in 1925, being raised to the rank of a minor basilica in 1935 by Pius XI. In 1897 the mission at Ealing was undertaken from which has come St Benedict’s Abbey, Ealing. In 1919 a foundation was made at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, USA, later to be taken over by Fort Augustus Abbey, before reaching independence as Portsmouth Abbey. Similarly a settlement was made at Worth in 1933 from which has come Worth Abbey.

Some of the community are employed outside the Monastery with parish work and chaplaincies. and a link is maintained with Bristol University through the Downside Centre for Religious Studies and the University Chaplaincy.

The School attached to the Monastery is for Catholic boys from the age of 10 to 18 years.