Monk Bretton Priory

I'll be back in the morning to say a little more.

You'd probably never guess that this Priory was within a few hundred yards if you drove along the Pontefract Road on your way out of Barnsley. Well I knew it was there (somewhere) and that I'd been meaning to stop and have a look but never quite got around to it. Well last night we made the slight detour on the way back from my Mum's and voila!

Unfortunately the site was locked up (believe me it would need to be in this locality)! But there was so much more left of the building than I expected - so it definitely will be worth revisiting. What I'd really like is to be able to take some photos with the sun setting, but I guess I would need arranging with the custodian of the site - maybe for the photographic club.

The building above is shown on the plan map as an administrative building and it's clearly much younger than the priory itself - possibly Tudor. I'm not sure who made the decision to roof it in slate but it seems wrong to me. My guess is that it was originally roofed with stone (my understanding is that slate wasn't used as a roofing material until the advent of the railways in the 19C which facilitated transportation from the Welsh quarries.)

Hugh Wilmott of Sheffield University outlines the history:

Founded in 1154 by the Cluniac order, Monk Bretton Priory became an independent Benedictine house in 1281. Following the passing of the Act of Suppression the priory was formally dissolved on 30 November 1538, and the site passed into the ownership of the Blithman family. In 1580 the land was again sold to George Talbot 6th Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford who gave the estate to his fourth son Henry on his marriage to Elizabeth Rayner. Henry Talbot had no sons and Monk Bretton passed after his death via his daughter into the Armyne family. The status of the site diminished rapidly during the 18th and 19th centuries, and at the time of its final occupation in the 1930s it was a just a farmhouse.

There's more information on the Friends of Monk Bretton Priory website:

Friends of Monk Bretton Priory