Isleham Priory Church
Isleham Priory Church in Isleham, at the eastern bounds of Cambridgeshire, is a Norman church built in around 1090, and long since deconsecrated. Despite being converted into a barn, it remains in a largely unaltered state.
The Church of St Margaret of Antioch was given to the Benedictine Abbey of St Jacut-de-la-Mer in Brittany, France around 1100 by Count Alan of Brittany or his successors and the Benedictines founded the alien priory on the site. In 1254 the monks moved to the sister cell at Linton, although the site seems to have been used as a priory after that time.[1] Due to the tensions of a French owned monastery in England during the hundred years war, the lands were seized by the King in 1414 and granted to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1440.[2] From either this point, or following the reformation, and well into the 1960s, the conventual church was used as a barn, more latterly a store for both tractors and straw.
In 1944 Pembroke College placed the chapel in the guardianship of the Ministry of Works.
Today the church is a Grade I listed building[3] and now in the care of English Heritage. The foundations of the conventual buildings and the earthworks in the surrounding land are a scheduled ancient monument.[1]
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Isleham Priory Church) |
- Location map: 52°20’32"N, -0°24’37"E
- Isleham Priory Church - English Heritage
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 National Heritage List 1013278: Isleham priory: an alien Benedictine priory 100m west of St Andrew's Church
- ↑ National Monuments Record: No. 377667 – Isleham Priory Church
- ↑ National Heritage List 1126476: Priory Church of St Margaret of Antioch