A Story In Stone

William de Warenne, the Norman baron whose castle we explored briefly in the last post, was also responsible for founding a Cluniac priory on his other lands near Lewes in Sussex. He then brought some of the monks to Castle Acre. Initially they lived in the castle but when that proved to be an unsuitable home for religious gentlemen they were given land to build a priory just a short distance away.

The building of their church took place slowly and the western end, which you can see above, was not completed till 1160. Although the brothers of the Cluniac order lived simple lives, they went in for great ornamentation in their religious buildings.

There's just enough of the elaborate stonework to give some idea of how grand the church looked in its heyday.

In theory the Cluniac order was governed from Cluny in France, though this led to all kinds of practical problems when England and France were at war, as they often were during the lifetime of the priory. The monks, who were almost exclusively English anyway, suffered heavy taxation during those times. Mostly they governed themselves, according to their own strict rules.

Walking among the ruins you can try to conjure up a picture of life in those far-off days. Lets go "inside" the church and try to get an impression of the dimensions of the building. You really need to think of a cathedral-sized building, even though there were never more than 30 or 40 monks in residence here.

We are standing here by the High Altar. Three steps lead down into the Choir. The low walls running across in the distance mark the position of the great Crossing Tower. Beyond that is the Nave and eventually we reach the west end of the church, which we saw in the first photo. The beehive-shaped heaps of stone running along either side are the remains of the huge pillars which held up the roof.

One can look out through the missing walls towards the village church. If you look carefully you can still see the dressed stone around the bases of the arches and pillars.

Grand and impressive as it is there's a lot more to investigate than just the Priory Church. And in a lot of cases there's more remaining than just the ground-level footings.

Here we are looking across the Cloister towards the Prior's Lodging and a corner tower of the Priory Church.

What remains of my schoolboy-self surfaces briefly here to delight in the Reredorter, otherwise known as the latrine block. As you can see it was a two-storey affair; on the ground level were toilets which could be entered from the Cloister, while upstairs were similar facilities, connected to the monks' sleeping quarters by a bridge (which no longer exists). Water from the river was diverted here to flush the toilets.

The buildings seen above are the main Porch and the Prior's Lodgings, which is where I'll show you next. Though in reality we also explored the kitchens, fishponds, barns, the grain-drying facilities, the brewhouse and the infirmary - all of them interesting but plain structures, some of them only existing as outlines on the ground.

The building above is the main entrance, or porch, to the Priory. Although the Priory was closed down by Henry VIII and, like every other monastery, its lands and resources were seized by the crown, many of the buildings found other uses and so survive in reasonable condition to this day.

You can enter the undercroft of the entrance porch and from there you can climb a very narrow spiral staircase into the Prior's Study and private chapel.

Although everything is cracked and faded it's still possible to imagine the grandeur of these rooms.

You can peer through the windows to the church, just as the Priors of days gone by must have done.

Sometimes it's the tiny details that bring us closest to the people of the past - long ago a medieval craftsman balanced on a set of wooden steps and carefully painted these flowers on the beams.

In the Prior's Chapel some small details survive unscathed.

The grand fireplace where the Prior must have warmed himself during the winter. But we can make our way (slowly and carefully) back down those precipitous spiral stairs and back out into the spring sunshine to admire the building from there.

A few more visitors had begun to filter in, including these very young historians and their guide ("It's even bigger than our house!"). On the way out we had a look at the recently restored herb garden.

Take care.

Castle Acre Priory is in the care of the charity English Heritage. There is a charge to look around but it seemed a very reasonable sum to pay for so much history.