Mount Grace Priory

 ruins, monastery, charterhouse, dissolved

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Unlike many monasteries in this part of England (which were mostly Cistercian houses) Mount Grace Priory was a Carthusian foundation (or Charterhouse), one of only ten in the whole country.

The inhabitants of other houses like Rievaulx, Jervaulx, Byland (Cistercian), Fountains (Benedictine, then Cistercian), Guisborough and Kirkham (both Augustinian) and Egglestone and Easby (both Premonstratesian), dwelt, worked and prayed as a community. At Mount Grace the monks lived as 'communal hermits', each having an apartment, or cell, and garden. There were communal offices and services held in their church.

Mount Grace was founded in 1398 and dissolved in 1539 in Henry VIII's wealth and property grab.

The priory is administered by English Heritage (with National Trust connections: NT members get in free) and is open to the public.

See: www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/conProperty.373

See: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplac...

See: www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/priories/mount_grace.htm

This last URL above refers to a particularly good website.