Shulbrede Priory is a former medieval monastic house 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 a ...

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 ...

; it became the home of the Ponsonby family, including the first Lord Ponsonby. It is a Grade I listed building.

Early history

Shulbrede Priory was originally known as Woolynchmere Priory, being situate in the parish of

Linchmere Linchmere, also often spelled Lynchmere, is a village and a civil parish, the northernmost parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. As well as Linchmere village, the parish contains the settlements of Hammer and Camelsdale. Linc ...

, which was at that time spelt Wlenchemere. It was founded as a house for canons of the Augustinian order, towards the end of the 12th century, by Sir Ralph de Arderne. As built, it was very much larger than the portion now surviving. To the north was a cruciform church oriented towards an east facing altar, with north and south transepts dividing the nave from the chancel. The length of the church, from east to west, was about and, from the north to the south transepts, about . To the south of the nave were cloisters, around which were grouped a Chapter House and Warming Room to the east, a refectory to the south, and a buttery, parlour and other buildings to the west. In about 1234,

Ralph Neville Ralph Neville (or Ralf NevillClanchy ''From Memory to Written Record'' p. 90 or Ralph de Neville; died 1244) was a medieval clergyman and politician who served as Bishop of Chichester and Lord Chancellor of England. Neville first appears in t ...

, Bishop of Chichester, agreed with the Abbot of Séez (

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 deri ...

in Normandy, France) to appropriate the church at Shulbrede to the Priory, having previously been a "daughter" of the

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Ch ...

at Cocking.

Since the dissolution

At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Priory became part of the Cowdray estate, which retained it until 1902. The only portion of the Priory buildings which remained standing was the range of buildings to the south of the cloisters. This includes the parlour leading into the former cloisters, the buttery (an undercroft) and above it what was originally the prior's chamber or guests' hall. This was at some point divided into smaller rooms, and one of the partition walls was decorated with wall paintings, which can still be seen. The paintings are of birds, animals, women in Elizabethan dress, the Royal Arms of King James I, and animals with inscriptions in Latin referring to the birth of Christ.

Ponsonby ownership

From 1902, Shulbrede Priory became the family home of

Arthur Ponsonby Arthur Augustus William Harry Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede (16 February 1871 – 23 March 1946), was a British politician, writer, and social activist. He was the son of Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria and ...

, later (1930) created first

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, of Shulbrede in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1930 for the politician Arthur Ponsonby. Ponsonby was the third son of General Sir Henry Ponsonby and the great ...

, and his wife

Dorothea Dorothea (also spelled Dorothée, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Dōrothéa) meaning "God's Gift". It may refer to: People * Dorothea Binz (1920–1947), German concentration camp officer executed for war cr ...

, the daughter of the composer

Sir Hubert Parry Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 18487 October 1918) was an English composer, teacher and historian of music. Born in Richmond Hill in Bournemouth, Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is be ...

. Parry composed some piano pieces called ''Shulbrede Tunes'', which were musical portraits of the members of the Ponsonby family. Lord and Lady Ponsonby had a son, Matthew Ponsonby, later the 2nd Lord Ponsonby, and a daughter, the "Bright Young Thing" Elizabeth Ponsonby, whose family home this was. Until 1925, when

copyhold Copyhold was a form of customary land ownership common from the Late Middle Ages into modern times in England. The name for this type of land tenure is derived from the act of giving a copy of the relevant title deed that is recorded in the ...

was abolished, the

Court Baron The manorial courts were the lowest courts of law in England during the feudal period. They had a civil jurisdiction limited both in subject matter and geography. They dealt with matters over which the lord of the manor had jurisdiction, primaril ...

of the Manor of Linchmere and Shulbrede was held in the priory. When Lord Ponsonby died in 1946, his widow continued to live at Shulbrede Priory. It was the home of their granddaughters, Laura Ponsonby, who died in 2016, and Kate Russell, who still lives there with her husband.

Listing

Shulbrede Priory became a Grade I listed building in 1959.

References

External links

Shulbrede Priory
an article about Shulbrede Priory by Chris Lea, dated 7 January 2013, and illustrated with a variety of photographs of the building in its current form. {{coord, 51.061678, -0.750938, region:GB_type:landmark_scale:2000_source:wikimapia, name=Shulbrede Priory, display=title Monasteries in West Sussex Grade I listed buildings in West Sussex