More information : [TA 0000 0445] (5) (Remains of) Priory [G T] (Gilbertine)
[Name centred: SE 9990 0447] Newstead Priory [T I] (1-2)
The Gilbertine Priory of Holy Trinity, Newstead on Ancholme, was founded in 1164, or 1171, and dissolved in 1538. (3-4)
Extant remains consist only of the sub-vaulting of the former chapter house, now incorporated in the modern lounge of the farmhouse - Newstead Priory. (5)
One room in the farmhouse is a vaulted room of the Gibertine priory founded in 1171. It is two-naved with groin-vaults. Corbels on the N, S, and W walls. Two octagonal piers with simple capitals. The room originally continued to the E. It is most probably part of the refectory. The SW quoins are original too. Above it, in the W wall, a three-light Perp window.(6)
Centred TA 000045. Site of Newstead on Ancholme Priory. The vaulted room in the present farmhouse may be part of the refectory or the chapterhouse crypt. Earthworks in fields to south and south-east include a fishpond (b). A lead papal bulla of Pope Gregory IX from Priory Farm is in Scunthorpe Museum, acc code: CD NP; and part of a human skeleton was found near the farmhouse in 1959. (7)
Newstead Priory Farmhouse and screen wall adjoining to left (formerly listed as Farmhouse incorporating remains of Newstead Priory) Grade I.
Farmhouse and adjoining screen wall, incorporating former monastic range of Gilbertine Priory and re-using medieval masonry. C12-C13 undercroft with C15-C16 first-floor section, extended and converted to house in early C19 for Yarborough Estate. Later C19 bay windows and extensions to right and rear. Main range of squared limestone and rubble with ashlar dressings, rendered to front and part of left return; rear extension in coursed limestone rubble with brick dressings; right extension rendered; brick stacks. Westmorland slate roof to main range, Welsh slate roof to bay windows and later extensions. Plan: 2-room central-entrance hall east front, with vaulted undercroft of 2 by 2 bays forming ground-floor left room, former entrance hall now opened out to ground-floor right room, stairs to rear; double-depth kitchen/lobby extension to right, single-room extension to rear. East front: 2 storeys, 4 first-floor windows; single-window extension set back to right, single-bay screen wall to left. Chamfered plinth. Round-arched entrance to right of centre with recessed half-glazed panelled door and plain overlight, flanked by single ground-floor canted bay windows to each side with sills, plate-glass sashes and moulded cornices. C20 casement to right extension. Round-headed first-floor sashes in flush wooden architraves with glazing bars and sills. Moulded wooden eaves board. Stone-coped gables with shaped kneelers. Central axial stack and end stack to right with dentilled cornices. Double-span roof to extension with coped gables, shaped kneelers and corniced end stacks. Screen wall forms continuation of front: plinth, round headed coved niche, ashlar coping ramped down to left between piers with ashlar ball finials. Rear: ashlar quoins to main range, brick quoins to wing. Main range has steps down to half-glazed 2-fold door beneath timber lintel, and C16 3-light first-foor painted ashlar window with 4-centred arch lights, moulded mullions and C19 glazing bars, beneath hood-mould with carved bust stops. 16-pane sash to wing in flush wooden architrave and brick surround with segmental arch containing re-set medieval carved stone head. Right return, main range: central ground-floor round-headed window with 12-pane sliding sash flanked by 12-pane sliding sash and C20 casement; central first floor 16-pane sash. Interior. Quadripartite vaulting to ground floor left has plastered rubble ceiling and chamfered ashlar round-arched ribs with diamond stops, supported on moulded corbels and central octagonal pier (perhaps a later replacement) with a moulded capital. A second, plastered, pier to the east, supporting an extension of the vaulting into the bay window, is probably a C19 insertion
incorporating an original corbel. Former square-headed doorway to south wall, now a window. Remains of arch in north wall revealed in alterations to door from ground floor right to kitchen. C19 features include: wall cupboard to ground floor left with geometrical glazing, elliptical-arched recesses to ground floor right with archivolts and scrolled consoles, similar arch to entrance passage. Newstead-on Ancholme Priory, founded before 1164, was dissolved in 1538. Nattes" drawing shows a second 3-light first-floor north window which may have been removed in C19, or blocked and obscured by rear wing. The surviving medieval structure is variously interpreted as a refectory or chapter house. An impressive adjoining C12 round-arched doorway was removed to Brocklesby Park soon after 1812 (probably when house was built) and subsequently lost. (8)
The earthworks, including a fishpond, described by authority 7 were seen on good quality air photographs. A complex series of water features (fishponds and drains) was mapped. Nine possible fishponds, aligned in parallel, were seen mostly as cropmarks, a couple as earthworks, all 30m to 40m long and centred at TA 00160441.
Also seen as a cropmark was a triple-ditched feature (centred at TA0034 0418) probably representing some kind of water filled boundary delineating the gardens/estate belonging to Newstead Priory. However, it could also perform a drainage function as it appears to link the extensive fish pond complex to the north with a system of ditches to the south west (TA 0015 0402). The ditches form a regular pattern, at TA 0026 0398, around a pond and could represent some kind of formal garden feature. (Morph Nos. LI.493.2.1 - 2.5, 3.1 - 3.2)
This description is based on data from the RCHME MORPH2 database.
(9)
This site is considered to be of national importance and to merit scheduling. However it is not possible to define an appropriate area for scheduling on the basis of the available information.
The Priory of the Holy Trinity was granted a charter by Henry II on an island called Rucholm in 1171. This has been taken as its foundation date, although it should be noted that elsewhere Henry granted charters to pre-existing communities and there is a suggestion that Newstead was in existance by 1164. The number of cannons and brothers was limited to 13 and in 1291 its income was nearly £50. In the fourtheenth century its principle income was via the sale of wool. Newstead is thought to have eben badly hit by the Black Death, but still had 13 in community in 1377. The prior and five cannons surrendered the house in 1538 at the Dissolution. It is thought that the priory then passed to the Yarborough Estate. The farm house, extended in the early nineteenth century, is listed Grade I and incorporates a twelfth-thireteenth century vaulted room described (on the basis of the modern height of the room) as an undercroft in the listing description. However, David Stocker has suggested that this may have been reconstructed from fragments circa 1800. A late eighteenth century illustration of the farm house shows a west facing Romanesque arched doorway extending south from this vaulted room. Another illustration dated 1814 shows the arch in greater detail, its appearance being consistent with that expected of the main west doorway of the church. This arch is believed to have eben taken down and possibly re-erected elsewhere on the Yarborough estate in the nineteenth century.
The modern farm sits on the north end of a sandy island of at most 400m wide and just over 1km north south which rises up to 2-3m above the level of the surrounding landscape. As such it is similar to Thornholme Priory which lies 9km to the NNW further down the valley. Excavations in the 1970s at Thornholme showed that the level of the ground floor surface had been successively raised by its community, presumably as a response to flooding, and that significant depths of archaeological depositis survived beneath the plough soil. At New stead the current floor in teh vaulted room is about level with the outside ground surface. However it is an inserted floor, the medieval floor being 1m below implying that the medieval ground surface was also lower and that significant buried remains of the priory survive.
A possible interpretation of the site is that the church lay to the east of the Farm House with the men's cloister in the field known as Priory FIeld to teh south west (which contains a large level platform). The area of farm yards and buildings to the north is a likey position for the outer court buildings, and , if Newstead was a double house, the women's cloister. However all this is too speculative to form the basis of a scheduling proposal, some concrete indications of the layout of the priory is required to design an appropriate constraint area.
Newstead Priory could form an interesting research project incorporating field walking and geophysical survey. The owners would probably be very sympathetic as they are interested in the priory's history, and have for instance visisted Lincoln Archives. (11) |