Wintney Priory

Last updated

Wintney Priory
Monastery information
Order Cistercian nuns
Establishedlate twelfth century
Disestablished1536
Dedicated toThe Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene
People
Founder(s)Richard and Christine Holte
Important associated figuresThe Cobreth family
Site
Location Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, England
Coordinates 51°17′27″N0°53′15″W / 51.290855°N 0.887532°W / 51.290855; -0.887532
Visible remainsnone
Public accessno

Wintney Priory was a priory of Cistercian nuns in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, England.

Priory religious house governed by a prior or prioress

A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or nuns, or monasteries of monks or nuns. Houses of canons regular and canonesses regular also use this term, the alternative being "canonry".

Hartley Wintney village in the United Kingdom

Hartley Wintney is a village civil parish in the Hart district of Hampshire, England. It lies about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Fleet and 8 miles (13 km) east of Basingstoke. The parish includes the village of Phoenix Green as well as the hamlets of Dipley, Elvetham, Hartfordbridge, and West Green.

Hampshire County of England

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England. The county town is the city of Winchester. Its two largest cities, Southampton and Portsmouth, are administered separately as unitary authorities; the rest of the county is governed by Hampshire County Council.

Contents

Foundation

The priory was founded in the 12th century, and was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene. There is some uncertainty over the name of the founder: the obituary of the convent calendar states that Richard Holte and Christina his wife, the daughter of Thomas Cobreth, founded the house and Geoffrey Fitz Peter founded the first church. But Leland states that the founders were Roger Cobreth and his son Thomas. The Cobreth family clearly had close associations with the priory since various members were benefactors and one Dame Diana Cobreth had her heart buried before the high altar.

John Leland (antiquary) English poet and antiquary

John Leland or Leyland was an English poet and antiquary.

12th to 16th centuries

The original temporary church or chapel was replaced in 1234 by a stone church, founded by Richard de Herriard. Several other members of the de Herriard family were benefactors of the convent.

In 1316 the priory's finances were in a poor state due to "negligence and poor administration" and the nuns were dispersing since no provisions were being made for their food. This was perhaps related to the famines of 1315 and subsequent years. The Archbishop of Canterbury instituted a commission with full powers "to visit the nunnery and to inquire, correct, reform and punish the excesses of delinquents". This seems to have turned matters around by the 1320s. However, in 1398 and again in 1404 the priory was exempted from collection of the second moiety of the tenth "because it is a house of poor nuns heavily encumbered".

Archbishop of Canterbury Senior bishop of the Church of England

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justin Welby, who was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on 21 March 2013. Welby is the 105th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", sent from Rome in the year 597. Welby succeeded Rowan Williams.

Moiety title is a legal term describing a portion other than a whole of ownership of property. The word derives from Old French moitié, "half", from Latin medietas ("middle"), from medius.

Tithe Religious donation

A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash or cheques, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products. Several European countries operate a formal process linked to the tax system allowing some churches to assess tithes.

Occasionally the nunnery's superiors were termed abbesses rather than prioresses.

Abbess female superior of a community of nuns, often an abbey

In Catholicism, an abbess is the female superior of a community of nuns, which is often an abbey.

The church of St. Mary, Hartley Wintney, was included in the original endowment and the prioress and nuns presented the vicars till the Dissolution.

Dissolution of the Monasteries legal event which disbanded religious residences in England, Wales and Ireland

The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former personnel and functions. Although the policy was originally envisaged as increasing the regular income of the Crown, much former monastic property was sold off to fund Henry's military campaigns in the 1540s. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from Papal authority, and by the First Suppression Act (1535) and the Second Suppression Act (1539).

Dissolution

On 23 May 1536 commissioners visited the priory of Wintney, "a hedde house of nuns, order of Cisteaux". They estimated its annual value at £52 5s. 8d. and found there ten nuns, "by reporte of good conversation, which trooly desieren to contynue in the same religion". There were also two priests, a waiting servant, thirteen hinds, nine woman servants, and two "corrodiers" with their two servants. The church and mansion were in good repair save the tiling, but the kitchen and brewhouse were in great decay.

The priory was surrendered on 22 July 1536.

Post-Dissolution

A grant of the site and lands of the prioress was given to Sir William Poulet, comptroller of the king's household, in August 1536. In May 1538 "the house and site of the dissolved priory of Wintney, with the church, steeple and churchyard of the same, the manor and rectory of Hartley Wintney and all lands pertaining" were granted to Richard Hill and Elizabeth his wife. A letter of 1538 from Richard Poulet to Mr. Hill ordered him "in the name of the king's commissioners, to cease to deface any of the buildings of the late priory of Wintney besides those which the king had given him, which were only the cloister and the dorter".

Present day

An 18th-century farmhouse, Wintney Farm, stands on the site of the priory. The old parish church of St. Mary, which was originally a substantial church of the 13th and 14th centuries, and hence extant when the convent existed, still remains.

Related Research Articles

Arthington Priory human settlement in United Kingdom

Arthington Priory was an English monastery which was home to a community of nuns in Arthington, West Yorkshire, founded in the mid-12th century. The priory land is occupied by a residence called "Arthington Hall", which was built around 1585, and little, if anything, remains of the priory. The site of the priory church is possibly now occupied by a farmhouse called The Nunnery. The community was the only one of nuns of the Cluniac congregation in Yorkshire and one of two in England. It was established through a grant by Peter de Arthington.

Broadholme Priory human settlement in United Kingdom

Broadholme Priory was a convent of canonesses of the Premonstratensian Order located near to the village of Broadholme. Historically in Nottinghamshire, since boundary changes in 1989, the priory and village has been in Lincolnshire.

Amesbury Abbey was a Benedictine abbey of women at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, founded by Queen Ælfthryth in about the year 979 on what may have been the site of an earlier monastery. That foundation was dissolved in 1177 by Henry II, who founded in its place a house of the Order of Fontevraud, known as Amesbury Priory.

St. Agnes' Priory was a Roman Catholic convent for women of the Dominican Order, situated in Roskilde in Denmark from 1264 until the Danish Reformation. It was a prestigious establishment, and most nuns came from the Danish nobility.

Harrold Priory was a priory in Harrold, Bedfordshire, England. It was established in 1138 and disestablished in 1536.

St Mary Magdalen Nunnery, Bristol human settlement in United Kingdom

St Mary Magdalen Nunnery was a priory of Augustinian canonesses in Kingsdown, Bristol, England. It was founded c. 1173 and dissolved in 1536. St Mary Magdalen is remembered in the name of Maudlin Street; the nunnery was located near to the corner of Maudlin Street and St Michael's Hill, which was later the site of the King David Inn.

Armathwaite Nunnery was a Benedictine nunnery in Cumbria, England. It was situated near the confluence of the rivers Croglin Water and Eden in the southern angle of the parish of Ainstable, and was first known as the nunnery of Ainstable.

Seaton Priory human settlement in United Kingdom

Originally called the nunnery of Lekeley from the name of the land it was built upon, the former nunnery of Seaton is to the north of the parish of Bootle, Cumbria, England.

Kings Mead Priory Derby, England

King's Mead Priory was a Benedictine Priory situated west of Derby, in the area currently known as Nun's Street, or Nun's Green. It was the only Benedictine Nunnery in Derbyshire.

Alvingham Priory human settlement in United Kingdom

Alvingham Priory was a Gilbertine priory in St. Mary, Alvingham, Lincolnshire, England. The Priory, established between 1148 and 1154, was a "double house", where religious of both sexes lived in two separate monasteries. They did not commonly communicate with one another, and there was an internal wall dividing their priory church. The superior of every Gilbertine house was the prioress, the prior being really an official of her house.

Stixwould Priory was a priory in Lincolnshire, England.

Carrow Abbey Grade I listed architectural structure in the United Kingdom

Carrow Abbey is a former Benedictine priory in Bracondale, southeast Norwich, England. The village on the site used to be called Carrow and gives its name to Carrow Road, the football ground of Norwich F.C., located just metres to the north. Granted by charter of King Stephen, the abbey was founded ca. 1146, and became a Grade I listed building in 1954.

Farewell Priory

Farewell Priory was a Benedictine nunnery near Lichfield in Staffordshire, England. Although it received considerable episcopal support, it was always small and poor. It was dissolved in 1527 as a by-product of Cardinal Wolsey's scheme to establish a college within Oxford University.

Kirklees Priory human settlement in United Kingdom

Kirklees Priory was a Cistercian nunnery whose site is in the present-day Kirklees Park, Clifton near Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England. It was originally in the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Dewsbury. The priory dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St James was founded by Reiner le Fleming, Lord of the manor of Wath upon Dearne, in 1155 during the reign of Henry II.

The former Priory of Douglas was a Cistercian monastery of nuns on the Isle of Man, apparently founded in the reign of Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson, King of the Isles.

Black Ladies Priory

Black Ladies Priory was a house of Benedictine nuns, located about 4 km west of Brewood in Staffordshire, on the northern edge of the hamlet of Kiddemore Green. Founded in the mid-12th century, it was a small, often struggling, house. It was dissolved in 1538, and a large house was built on the site in Tudor and Jacobean styles by the Giffard family of Chillington Hall. Much of this is incorporated in the present Black Ladies, a large, Grade II*-listed, private residence.

Keldholme Priory election dispute 14th-century monastic election

The Keldholme Priory election dispute occurred in Yorkshire, England, in 1308. After a series of resignations by its prioresses, the establishment was in a state of turmoil, and the Archbishop of York, William Greenfield, appointed one of the nuns to lead the house. His candidate, Emma de Ebor', was deemed unacceptable by many nuns, and they undermined her from the start, to the extent that she resigned three months later. The Archbishop, forced to find another candidate, claimed he was unable to do so from within the priory, and appointed Joan de Pykering from nearby Rosedale Priory. It is likely that Keldholme's nuns saw de Pykering as an intruder, and they seem to have reacted against her in much the same way as they had her predecessor.

References

See also