The Monastery of St Antony and St Cuthbert is a hermitage within the Romanian jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, high up in the South-west Shropshire hills. Situated at 1,273 ft, under the Shepherd’s Rock, on the eastern slopes of the Stiperstones, Father Silouan lives alone, in what was once a miner’s cottage and small holding of twenty acres of pasture and woodland. He lives a life of prayer, silence, liturgy and work in the ancient tradition of orthodox monasticism.

Priest-monk Silouan began monastic life twenty-one years ago, in the monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, in the county of Essex, established in 1959 by the late Archimandrite Sophrony, disciple of St Silouan the Athonite.  Like St Silouan, Fr Sophrony was a monk of the Monastery of St Panteleiomon on Mt Athos in Greece.  On the Holy Mountain, monks have prayed the Jesus Prayer, hallowing God’s Name in their hearts, for well over a thousand years.