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This monastery included both a hospital and a school, under the energetic rule of its first abbess. Hildelith succeeded Aethelburg, and it was for her and her companions that the scholar Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, wrote his work, "De Laudibus Virginitatis." He speaks of the nunnery as a hive where the nuns work like little bees, for they collect everywhere material for study.
Several chapters in Bede's Ecclesiastical History are devoted to stories of the double monastery at Barking, which was one of the most famous. It was founded by Erconwald, who afterwards became bishop of London. He built one for himself at Chertsey, and one for his sister Aethelburg at Barking, and, as Bede says, "established them both in regular discipline of the best kind."
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