The bulk of the Obituary texts are inherited from the collection of Ampleforth monks between 1850 and 1895 made by Fr Hilary Willson about the time of the second World War (1939-45), supplemented by numerous texts taken from the Ampleforth Journal. Their authorship is recorded (probably by Fr Bede Turner) in Ampleforth Journal 58:1 (1953) p 1. This is supported by the writer quoting McCann as an authority in the obituary of Fr Ambrose Prest. The manuscript has not survived, but there are two typed copies in the archives of the Abbey, never previously published.

The following appears in AJ 58:1 (1953) 1, as a footnote to an article giving an account of three monks (Margison, McEntee & Sutton), which have been added to the respective Lives. The article is unsigned, but is certainly not by Hilary Willson (it mentions him) and is very likely by Bede Turner, whose dates fit, and who wrote several historical items for the journal in his retirement. The text was published after his death but it suggests that the writer was in the school around 1886: and such internal evidence as appears does fit Turner. In a footnote he says,

Most of the monks named, including the first two, the writer saw 'in the flesh'; some he knew more or less well, but the greater part of his information has been gathered from the talk of senior fathers, amplified from the manuscript biography of each monk kept in the monastery archives. The first series of these, up to 1850, is the work of the chief annalist of the English Benedictines, Abbot Allanson; the second series from 1850 to 1895 was compiled by Fr Hilary Willson; in 1895 The Ampleforth Journal began to appear.

They are collected here for ease of access, for anyone who wishes to seek information. In time we hope to collect similar texts for other monks and nuns, if available: meanwhile the Notes section of individual records has been enlarged with deatil wherever material can be found. It will take time to cover many individuals (there are nearly 3000), and in many cases no material is known to exist.

They also bear a witness of their own to the sort of life which monks follow, and the qualities which grow in those who are faithful to the Rule of St Benedict.

As yet we have not included many portraits, but there will be more in time.

This arrangement was suggested by the publication of Fr Athanasius Allanson's Biographies in 1999, which gave the lives of English Benedictines from ca 1600 to 1850. Material for monks and nuns of other houses, where given, is often taken from the Benedictine Almanack (sometimes called the Yearbook, or BYB). So far as we know, the copyright in all these sources rests with the Congregation or with Ampleforth.

Abbot Allanson's two volumes of biographies of English Benedictines terminates with the year 1850, including none who died after that date. The present series of biographies does not deal with all members of the English Benedictine Congregation but with Laurentians only. It is designed to cover the period between Allanson's last entry and the inauguration in 1895 of the Ampleforth Journal with its regular obituaries.

After the lapse of nearly a century from the death of some, and of half a century at least from the death of all, it has not in many cases been easy to gather the necessary material. The bare facts are of course, given in D. Norbert Birt's Obit Book 1912. Little or nothing more than these could be given here, were it not for the fact that our Ampleforth archives contain some two thousand or more letters for the period 1800 - 1900. From these and other such sources it has been possible to amplify the bare record of the Obit Book.

For the date and place of birth, and for the dates of clothing, profession, etc, I have relied normally on that book; but I have sometimes corrected or amplified its statements by means of D. Basil Whelan's lists, the Fasti of the monastery and the records of our Missions. For the date of arrival at Ampleforth - or residence there - I have used the Ampleforth Lists, begun in the diary of 1894 and continued in the early numbers of the Ampleforth Journal. In citing the letters preserved in our archives, I give first the number of the volume in which they are contained and then the serial number of the particular letter.