The manor of West Malling was given by King Edmund I to Burgric (or Burhic), Bishop of Rochester, in 946. The land was lost to the church in the Danish Wars but was restored to the diocese in 1076. About 1090, Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester and monk of Bec Abbey in Normandy, chose Malling as the site of his foundation for a community of Benedictine nuns, one of the first post-Conquest monasteries for women. Just before his death in 1108, Gundulf appointed the French nun Avicia as the first abbess.