For nearly 900 years the land known as Prinknash has been associated with Benedictine monks. In 1096 the Giffard family, who had come to England with William the Conqueror, made a gift of the land to Serlo, Abbot of Saint Peter's, Gloucester. A large part of the present building was built during the abbacy of William Parker, the last Abbot of Gloucester, around the year 1520. It remained in the abbey's hands until the suppression of the monasteries in 1539 when it was rented from the Crown by Sir Anthony Kingston who was to provide 40 deer annually to King Henry VIII, who used the House as a hunting lodge. Prinknash Park continued to be used as a home for the gentry and nobility of Gloucestershire during the next few centuries and each generation left its mark on the property. On 1 August 1928 a Deed of Covenant was made out by the twentieth Earl of Rothes, the grandson of Thomas Dyer Edwards, a Catholic convert, whose wish was that Prinknash should be given to the Benedictine monks of Caldey Island. These monks had converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1913 under the leadership of Abbot Ælred Carlyle, although he left monastic life in 1921 to work as a missionary priest in Vancouver. Caldey Island was eventually sold to the Cistercian monks and on 26 October 1928 six Benedictine monks arrived from Caldey to convert the house at Prinknash into a monastery. The rest soon followed and after some years of poverty they managed to purchase all the land around the house to make Prinknash as it is today. Fr. Wilfrid Upson, who had been appointed Prior after Carlyle's departure, was elected the first Abbot of Prinknash in 1937. The bones of Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, are kept at Prinknash. The community continued to grow, beginning with 25 monks. There are now 9 at Prinknash itself and more are spread over three monasteries, a foundation being made at Farnborough in May 1947 and in Pluscarden in Scotland later that year. In 1939 a foundation stone for a new abbey was laid at Prinknash by Cardinal Hinsley, but the Second World War intervened and the previous impracticable building plans were eventually redrawn by F.G. Broadbent. The monks moved into the new abbey in 1972 and the old abbey was re-roofed, re-furnished, and converted into a retreat and conference centre, known as "St Peter's Grange". However, by 2008 the now smaller community of monks had decided to move back to St Peter's Grange, and this took place on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
The forms of Mass celebrated at the abbey vary. Earlier, it was reported here that Prinknash had regular celebrations using the 1962 Roman Missal: a Low Mass each Saturday at 11.00 am and on the first Sunday of the month at 3.00 p.m.; and a Missa Cantata on certain high feasts and holy days and, on other days, Low Mass at 8.15 in the morning. In August 2019 the abbey stated on its website that it had "Low Mass" on Monday to Friday mornings at about 7:30, the exact time depending on the time of concluding lauds, but it described this "Low Mass" as celebrated "in English with sung Gospel Acclamation, Sanctus, Eucharistic Acclamation, & Conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer" and therefore incompatible with the 1962 Roman Missal, and it also indicated that the Scripture readings are those in the post-Vatican II lectionary. It said explicitly that the Saturday Mass, sung in Latin, was in the post-Vatican II form. Its description of the Sunday Mass was: "Solemn, with Incense, Chants from Kyriale & Graduale Romanum". This description too is in conformity with the 2002 General Instruction of the Roman Missal.
