Lesnes Abbey is a former abbey, now ruined, in Abbey Wood, in the London Borough of Bexley, southeast London, England. It is a scheduled monument, and the abbey's ruins are listed at Grade II by Historic England. The adjacent Lesnes Abbey Woods are a Local Nature Reserve. Part of the wood is the Abbey Wood SSSI, a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest which is an important site for early Tertiary fossils. History After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the area of Lesnes, close to the town of Erith, passed into the possession of Bishop Odo, and was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Loisnes in the Hundred of Litlelai. The year 1178 saw the foundation of the Abbey of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr at Lesnes, on a site now located in the suburbs of south east London to the north of the ancient but long-managed Lesnes Abbey Woods that are named after it, where the land rises above what would originally have been marshland. Lesnes Abbey, as it is now known, was founded by Richard de Luci, Chief Justiciar of England, in 1178. This may have been in penance for his role in the protracted conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, which culminated in the latter's murder in 1170 by four of the kings' knights. In 1179, de Luci resigned his office and retired to the abbey, where he died three months later. He was buried in the chapter house. In 1381 Abel Ker of Erith led a local uprising during the Peasants' Revolt, a rebellion which initially broke out in the neighbouring county of Essex. A group from Erith forced their way into nearby Lesnes Abbey and made the abbot to swear an oath to support them. They subsequently marched to Maidstone to join the main body of men led by Wat Tyler. The Abbot of Lesnes Abbey was an important local landlord, and took a leading part in draining the marshland. However, this and the cost of maintaining river embankments was one of the reasons given for the Abbey's chronic financial difficulties. It never became a large community, and was closed by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, under a licence to suppress monasteries of less than seven inmates. It was one of the first monasteries to be closed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1534, and the