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Newnham Priory

Memorials	:	0
Location	:	Bedford, Bedford Borough, England
Coordinate	:	52.1327710, -0.4437190
Description	:	About 1165, Bedford collegiate church of St. Paul was converted into a priory for Augustinian canons by Simon de Beauchamp to replace, and with the endowments of St Paul's. It was built around St Paul’s Church where services and prayers were held. Monks lived, ate and slept in buildings around the open-air cloisters. They also had indoor communal toilets flushed by flowing water. Newnham’s Augustinian canons wore black habits, or robes. The Priory owned some land, and had the right to graze cattle on Bedford Castle lands, or fish in and travel by Castle waters. The Priory also had 14... Read More	About 1165, Bedford collegiate church of St. Paul was converted into a priory for Augustinian canons by Simon de Beauchamp to replace, and with the endowments of St Paul's. It was built around St Paul’s Church where services and prayers were held. Monks lived, ate and slept in buildings around the open-air cloisters. They also had indoor communal toilets flushed by flowing water. Newnham’s Augustinian canons wore black habits, or robes. The Priory owned some land, and had the right to graze cattle on Bedford Castle lands, or fish in and travel by Castle waters. The Priory also had 14 churches in its care – including Willington and Goldington – and enjoyed the rights to their tithes (church taxes collected from these local communities – which could be paid in money, wool, milk, crops etc.). About 1180, it relocated from St Paul’s Church to Newnham following a legal scandal involving one their number, Philip de Broi, who had been accused of murder. The priory received some stone from the destruction of Bedford Castle in 1224-25. While the Black Death claimed the prior in 1348. When Henry VIII declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England in the 1530s, Newnham’s Prior signed an agreement to the King’s supremacy over the Church in 1535. Ultimately he couldn’t save the Priory and in 1540-41, it was handed over to the Crown, and the current Prior and a few canons were pensioned off. Newnham Priory was granted to the Goswick family, its stone being re-used in the outhouses and garden walls of the Tudor mansion built on the same spot. Excavations in the 1980s and 1990s recovered the plan of the church with the claustral buildings to the south. At least 13 outbuildings dating to the 12th-14th centuries were also discovered in a courtyard to the west of the priory. It was enclosed by a rampart and moat on three sides and the Ouse on the fourth, enclosing an area of 35 acres. Two `closes', on the east of the main enclosure, were also defended by a bank and moat, there are remains of large fishponds on the south near the river. The priory site has been largely destroyed by modern developments. The fishpond complex and extant remains of the `closes' of authority 3 have been surveyed. Recently discovered are portions of the precinct wall, built of brick, probably late 15th/early 16th century. The remains attain a maximum height of 2.0m and include a buttressed doorway and corner. A concrete coping of some age is also breaking up. Excavation in advance of road widening was carried out in 1971. A small earthwork near the northern limit of the Priory was probably originally circular, but elongated on a north-south axis by recent dumping. A linear ditch forming part of the remaining earthworks at Newnham Priory was sectioned during gravel extraction operations. It was shown to be a continuous boundary ditch of 13th-14th century date. Remains of medieval fishponds are visible as earthworks on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data and were mapped as part of the Bedford Borough NMP project. Located at Priory Marina, the fishpond earthworks were part of the former Newnham Priory. The earthworks were bisected by the construction of the London & North Western Railway (Cambridge & Bletchley branch) in the 19th century. The Aspects Leisure Park car park is on the site of the priory and church. Service outbuildings, including a blacksmith’s, stood where the leisure centre buildings are today. You can still see parts of the Tudor mansion garden wall in a hedge by the car park and part of the rebuilt priory precinct wall beside the entrance into the leisure park along Newnham Avenue. No trace of the Priory now exists save for a stretch of brick wall adjacent to Newnham Marina while a small triangle of grassland, banks and hollows are all that survive of the Priory’s system of fishponds located in a field west of the Marina between the disused railway line and the river.

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Where is Newnham Priory?
Newnham Priory is located at Goldington Road, Newnham Bedford, Bedford Borough ,Bedfordshire ,England.
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0 memorials
Where are the coordinates of the Newnham Priory?
Latitude: 52.1327710
Longitude: -0.4437190

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Newnham Priory

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