Makefield Monastery

Did you know that Upper Makefield was (very) briefly the home of a monastic order?

Growing up I had heard of the “monastery” on Jericho Mountain. I always assumed that it was one of the funky looking houses on Eagle Rd, or set back so far that it wasn’t possible to see. I didn’t think much of it really until recently. Here’s the story.

In August of 1895, Edward Horne leased thirty acres of land on Jericho Mountain to Reverend Father Hugh (aka. Russell Whitcomb), of St. Benedicts Abbey, Fallsington. Whitcomb was a former successful businessman in Boston who had the vision to build a monastery in Upper Makefield for him and several other monks in his order.

The land was part of the Benjamin Wiggins Homestead tract (today 355 Pineville Rd), consisting of twenty wooded acres and ten cleared. It lies on the western end of Jericho Mountain, on a crest between Buckmanville and Thompson Mill Roads. The tract is the square section of Edward Horne’s land, centered in this image from the 1891 atlas. The thirty acres was accessed by passing through the farms of Theodore Doan, John Cooper, Amos Doan, and Zoanna Briggs, and then via a rough old logger’s road. A total distance of more than a half mile, causing the Enterprise to aver It is doubtful whether any lonelier or more secluded spot could be found anywhere in this county. 

1891 Atlas Showing location of Monastery

Hugh enlisted a force to erect a temporary frame building on the site, with the intention of later building a $50,000 stone monastery for him and six to eight other monks using the inexhaustible supply of building stone on the site. The prospect excited considerable interest in the neighborhood and was covered in the Newtown Enterprise.

The frame building was fifty feet long, one-story and contained several apartments. The monks were to reside there in the summers, as they spent the winter months working in the slums of New York. They adopted the full habit of the Benedictine monk, shaved heads and sandals. 

The August 24th, 1895 issue of the Newtown Enterprise gives us a glimpse of what the monastic life at Jericho was to be like.

Far up on this lonely mountain heretofore seldom visited except by nutting parties and hunters, and heretofore inhabited only by foxes and other wild creatures, these men who have renounced the world and its enjoyments, will live and spend their time in performing the religious services and rites pertaining to the order to which they belong, undisturbed by the never-ending struggle for wealth, and place and power that is going on in the outside world. 

This rural idyll, however, was short lived. By December the monks, barely having erected their temporary shelter, abandoned their monastery and gave up its work. Whitcomb/Hugh removed to Wisconsin, where it was believed he would continue under new guidance.

One monk, however, remained at the monastery, at least for a few weeks. It was said that one could hear his bell ringing on adjacent farms, and a neighbor supplied him with the little food he needed to survive all alone in the failed Makefield monastery. At least someone found the solitude they sought, however briefly. 

Prominent local builder DJ McClanen promptly took down the building and used the materials in building a barn, which still stands, for Edward Horne’s new home at 28 North Lincoln Avenue in Newtown Borough. The home is interesting in that it has a turret covered with fish scale shingles, it was unlike most others in town and much admired. 

In 1947, local historian Harry W. Van Horn went on a trip to locate the ruins of the monastery and wrote about it in the November 27, 1947 Newtown Enterprise.