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Castle Acre, Norfolk, England, UK

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𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐀𝐜𝐫𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐲

In the early 1070s William de Warenne – a Norman knight who had fought alongside William the Conqueror at Hastings – chose Acre in Norfolk as the headquarters for his East Anglian landholdings. One of the many Normans whose fortunes were transformed by the conquest of England, he had accumulated lands across the country, including an estate in Norfolk. Founded by the Warenne family soon after the Norman Conquest, for almost 450 years, Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk was the home and workplace of monks and their servants, a refuge for pilgrims, and a stopping point for royalty, clergy and nobility. It was also part of a vast monastic network centred on the great abbey of Cluny in France. Today the priory remains are among the finest and best-preserved monastic ruins in England.

After almost a thousand years of development, England’s monasteries – then about 800 in number – were wiped out in the later 1530s during Henry VIII’s Suppression of the Monasteries. At Castle Acre the deed of surrender was signed on 22 November 1537 by the prior, Thomas Malling, and ten monks. They were probably granted small pensions and some, as was also usual, may have become parish or chantry priests. Much of the church was almost immediately demolished. ( English Heritage )

Image by Richard (via Flickr), 2013

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