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Founded: 1140Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Hohenstaufen Dynasty (Germany)
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In 1009 Herswithehusen (Hardehausen) became the property of Meinwerk, bishop of Paderborn. The abbey was founded in 1140 by bishop Bernhard I of Paderborn as a daughter house of Kamp Abbey on the Lower Rhine. Construction was completed with the dedication of the church in 1165.
During the Thirty Years' War the abbey was looted and destroyed. During its reconstruction in the years 1680 to 1750 it received its present form.
In 1803 the abbey was secularised, and the monks expelled. The contents were sold or auctioned, and the church was demolished in 1812. The estates were rented out as state property.
Hardehausen was briefly re-founded as a Cistercian monastery in 1927, but the new community was brought to an end by an order of dissolution issued by the National Socialist government in 1938, when the buildings and grounds were sold to the Henschel company from Kassel, from whom they were acquired by the Verein für katholische Arbeiterkolonien ('Union for Catholic Workers' Colonies'). In 1944 the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt (Napola) Bensberg transferred to Hardehausen. At this period an external work party from Buchenwald concentration camp, consisting of 30 prisoners, were deployed for forced labour in Hardehausen.
Since 1945 the former monastery has been used for the educational activities of the present Archdiocese of Paderborn. In 1970 all the buildings on the site were altered and extended for their educational functions.
References:Easter Aquhorthies stone circle, located near Inverurie, is one of the best-preserved examples of a recumbent stone circle, and one of the few that still have their full complement of stones. It consists of a ring of nine stones, eight of which are grey granite and one red jasper. Two more grey granite stones flank a recumbent of red granite flecked with crystals and lines of quartz. The circle is particularly notable for its builders' use of polychromy in the stones, with the reddish ones situated on the SSW side and the grey ones opposite.
The placename Aquhorthies derives from a Scottish Gaelic word meaning 'field of prayer', and may indicate a 'long continuity of sanctity' between the Stone or Bronze Age circle builders and their much later Gaelic successors millennia later. The circle's surroundings were landscaped in the late 19th century, and it sits within a small fenced and walled enclosure. A stone dyke, known as a roundel, was built around the circle some time between 1847 and 1866–7.