Arundel Priory
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Priory of St Nicholas was established at
Arundel Arundel ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Arun District of the South Downs, West Sussex, England. The much-conserved town has a medieval castle and Roman Catholic cathedral. Arundel has a museum and comes second behind much large ...
in
West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...
,
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
by
Roger de Montgomery Roger de Montgomery (died 1094), also known as Roger the Great, was the first Earl of Shrewsbury, and Earl of Arundel, in Sussex. His father was Roger de Montgomery, seigneur of Montgomery, a member of the House of Montgomerie, and was probably ...
,
earl of Shrewsbury Earl of Shrewsbury () is a hereditary title of nobility created twice in the Peerage of England. The second earldom dates to 1442. The holder of the Earldom of Shrewsbury also holds the title of Earl of Waterford (1446) in the Peerage of Ireland ...
, in 1102, when Gratian, a monk of
Sées Sées () is a commune in the Orne department in north-western France. It lies on the river Orne from its source and north-by-northeast of Alençon. Sées station has rail connections to Argentan, Caen and Le Mans. Name The town's name derives ...
in
Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
, became first prior. In 1269, the priory granted Master William de Wedon, in return for various gifts, board and lodging, and a room in the priory in which he might conduct a school.


Arundel College of the Holy Trinity

The priory was dissolved in 1380, when a college of the Holy Trinity with an adjoining hospice was established probably on the same site by
Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel Richard Fitzalan, 4th Earl of Arundel, 9th Earl of Surrey, KG (1346 – 21 September 1397) was an English medieval nobleman and military commander. Lineage Born in 1346, he was the son of Richard Fitzalan, 3rd Earl of Arundel and Eleanor of L ...
as a foundation to serve the needs of twenty aged poor men in the area and to provide education. The buildings of the college are architecturally in the same style as the new parish church of the same date. The
Fitzalan Chapel The Fitzalan Chapel is the chancel of the church of St Nicholas in the western grounds of Arundel Castle. The church of St Nicholas is one of the very few church buildings that is divided into two worship areas, a Roman Catholic area (the chan ...
of the parish church formed the college's north side, and there were two-storeyed east, south and west ranges; the east range lies beyond the east end of the Fitzalan chapel, and the outer wall of the west range is aligned with the east wall of the south transept of the church. In 1544 Arundel College was surrendered to the Crown, which then sold it back to the Earl of Arundel for 1,000 marks. It has remained in the hands of the
Howard family The House of Howard is an English noble house founded by John Howard, who was created Duke of Norfolk (third creation) by King Richard III of England in 1483. However, John was also the eldest grandson (although maternal) of the 1st Duke of the ...
since that time. For a period of nearly three centuries it lay derelict, much of it having been demolished and further damage inflicted on what remained during the course of the
English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
in the seventeenth century


St Wilfrid's Priory

There was a series of rebuildings and alterations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to form an agent’s house, a laundry and then a Catholic chapel with attached chaplain’s residence. Between 1804 and 1815 the building was rebuilt in Gothic style when it housed a private school. Further restoration work was undertaken in the middle of the nineteenth century, when in 1861 the south-east range was converted as a convent known as
St Wilfrid Wilfrid ( – 709 or 710) was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Francia, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and ...
’s Priory, as it remained until the 1950s. At the same period the appearance of the north side of the courtyard was altered by the building of the funerary chapel of
Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk Henry Granville Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk, (7 November 181525 November 1860) was a British peer and politician. He was hereditary Earl Marshal and the last undisputed Chief Butler of England. Family He was the son of Henry Charles ...
(d. 1860), which projects from the south side of the Fitzalan Chapel The Priory was run as a school by sisters of the (Catholic) Franciscan Order for the Duke of Norfolk; although it accepted young children from various backgrounds and economic circumstances, it also taught the dukes four daughters during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Classes were held in a large room on the first floor. There were never more than 28 pupils at one time. Gymnastics classes were taken outside the priory grounds, as the nuns were not equipped to manage that aspect of the curriculum, a male teacher came in to take these classes. The children walked through a gate into the grounds of the castle, to a ground floor room off the castle courtyard. Classes were held there weekly, and on one or two very rare occasions in summer children were permitted to swim in the Duke's swimming pool, or to play ball games on the Duke's famous cricket pitch in the castle park. Between c. 1961 and 1974 the college buildings were used as a children's home with 30 residents, and after 1976 the south range and part of the east range were converted as a care home and the north-east corner was divided into flats for the elderly, both run by the Order of Knights of Malta Homes Trust; and today by its successor charity, the Order of St John Care Trust.


Sources

M.T. Elvins, ''Arundel Priory 1380-1980: The College of the Holy Trinity'', 1981 'Arundel', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 5 Part 1: Arundel Rape: south-western part, including Arundel (1997), pp. 10–101.


References

{{Authority control Monasteries in West Sussex
Priory 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 (such as the Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Carmelites), or monasteries of mon ...