Butley Priory

A fragment of the ruined priory church.
Arms of Sir Guy Ferre (d.1323) in flushwork at Butley Priory gatehouse, Suffolk: Gules, a fer-de-moline argent over all a bendlet azure.

Butley Priory, sometimes called Butley Abbey, was a medieval monastic house in Butley in Suffolk, England, in the area of the Suffolk Heritage Coast. The only part surviving relatively intact is the very impressive 14th-century gatehouse, which has been in use as a private dwelling for about 280 years. A small fragment of the priory church and some masonry of the former domestic range survives in agricultural use at the adjacent Abbey Farm. The gatehouse is now used as a venue for private functions, corporate events or retreats.[1]

The abbey was an Augustinian fraternity founded in 1171 by Ranulf de Glanvill, Justiciar to King Henry II, who also (in 1182) founded the Premonstratensian abbey at Leiston a few miles north of Butley.[2] A late register or chronicle of the priory survives and is published.[3] It was dissolved in 1538 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Excavations in 1933 revealed that the site comprised a church, chapter house, dormitory, dormitory undercroft, reredorter, refectory, cellarage and store rooms.[4][5]

The abbey gatehouse, now known as Butley Priory, is very well preserved and displays stone sculpted heraldic escutcheons of its many benefactors, similar to the surviving gatehouse of Kirkham Priory in Yorkshire. It was converted to residential use c.1734 and restored again in 1926 by E.D. Caröe. Constructed in two storeys of stone and knapped flint it contains a fine Georgian staircase and some Elizabethan panelling. It is a grade I listed building.[6]

Priors of Butley

This list[7] is incomplete.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.vogue.com/13447478/airbnb-wedding-venues-around-the-world/ Vogue feature.
  2. ↑ The charters are printed in W.U.S. Glanville-Richards, Records of the Anglo-Norman house of Glanville, from A.D. 1050 to 1880 (Mitchell and Hughes, London 1882), pp. 37-39 (pdf pp. 60-62).
  3. ↑ A.G. Dickens (ed.),The Register or Chronicle of Butley Priory, Suffolk, 1510-1535 (Warren and Son, Winchester 1951).
  4. ↑ Historic England. "BUTLEY PRIORY (391251)". PastScape. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  5. ↑ J.N.L. Myers, W.D. Caröe and J.B. Ward Perkins, ‘Butley Priory, Suffolk,’ Archaeological Journal XC (1933), pp. 177–281.
  6. ↑ Historic England. "BUTLEY ABBEY AND PRIORY GATE HOUSE (1030850)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  7. ↑ W. Bowyer,An History of the Mitred Parliamentary Abbies, and Conventual Cathedral Churches, 2 Vols (Robert Gosling, London 1719), II, pp. 221-22.

External links

Coordinates: 52°05′28″N 1°27′54″E / 52.091°N 1.465°E / 52.091; 1.465


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