Abbaye Notre-Dame du Vœu, Ruined abbey in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, France

Abbaye Notre-Dame du Vœu is a ruined Augustinian monastery on Rue de l'Abbaye, west of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. Its surviving wall of grey and pale green stone blocks has rectangular window openings without glass, a central triangular pediment above a doorway, and a tall narrow stone fragment rising above the right portion. A low terrace wall, clipped shrubs and a circular stone basin stand in front.

Founded in 1145 by Empress Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, the abbey was consecrated in 1181. It was repeatedly pillaged and burned during the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion. A royal decree suppressed it in 1774 because it housed fewer than fifteen religious. It was partly classified as a monument in 1913 and fully in 2002.

The name Chantereyne, recorded for the marshy ground crossed by the Bucaille and Chantereyne streams, probably comes from Latin cantu ranarum, "where the frogs sing". The abbey itself was called "du Vœu" only from the 17th century. Matilda installed canons from Saint-Victor of Paris in 1160 and obtained for the abbot the right to wear a mitre, a crosier and a ring.

The ruins stand on Rue de l'Abbaye, at the western exit of Cherbourg before La Saline, in the Cherbourg-Octeville delegated commune. The site has been under restoration since 1964 and is fully classified as a historical monument since 2002. A low terrace wall with clipped shrubs and a circular stone basin runs in front of the long ruined wall.

The storm-and-vow tale comes from Arthur du Moustier's Neustria pia (1663), written five centuries after the fact; no contemporary chronicle records it. Robert Lerouvillois instead links the foundation to the vow of Matilda's grandfather William the Conqueror, who fell ill at Cherbourg and founded the castle collegiate church in 1063. The name Chantereyne more likely derives from cantu ranarum, the frogs of the marshy Bucaille and Chantereyne streams.