Walk 13: Hair-shirt of St Thomas More at Buckfast Abbey

Figure 1: Hair-shirt, relic of St Thomas More kept at Buckfast Abbey. Photo François-Daniel Migeon, 2023

Thomas More wore a hair-shirt or cilice (an undergarment used as a means of corporal mortification) from his youth to his death, see Thomas More’s Vocation. He gave it to his daughter, Margaret Roper before his execution.

A large portion of the hair-shirt was kept in St. Augustine’s Priory, Newton Abbot, in south Devon. After the closing of the Priory, it is now kept in Buckfast Abbey

Figure 2: Altar of St John Fisher and St Thomas More, Buckfast Abbey. Photo François-Daniel Migeon, 2023