Butley Priory

Priory gatehouse

Arms of Sir Guy Ferre (d.1323) in flushwork at Butley Priory, Suffolk: Gules, a fer-de-moline argent over all a bendlet azure

Butley Abbey, now known as Butley Priory, was a medieval monastic house near Butley in Suffolk, England. Apart from some mediaeval ruins, only the gatehouse still remains, which has been converted into a private house. The house is used as an venue for private functions, run by musician, Frances Shelley.

The abbey was an Augustinian fraternity founded in 1171 by Ranulph de Glanville, Justiciar of Henry II and dissolved in 1538 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Excavations in 1933 revealed that the site comprised a church, chapter house, dormitory, dormitory undercroft, reredorter, refectory, cellarage and store rooms.

The abbey gatehouse, now known as Butley Priory, is very well preserved and displays stone sculpted heraldic escutcheons of its many benefactors, similar to the surviving gatehouse of Kirkham Priory in Yorkshire. It was converted to residential use c.1734 and restored again in 1926 by E.D. Caroe. Constructed in two storeys of stone and knapped flint it contains a fine Georgian staircase and some Elizabethan panelling. It is a grade I listed building.

Priors of Butley

• 1172 - Gilbert
• 1194 - Gilbert
• 1195 - William
• 1229 - William
• 1303 - Richard de Jakesle
• 1307 - Nicholas de Wittlesham
• 1309 - Richard de Hoxne
• 1311 - William Geyton
• 1332 - Alexander de Stratford
• 1338 - Matthew de Pakenham
• 1351 - Alexander de Drinkeston
• 13?? - John Baxter
• 1374 - William Halesworth
• 1410 - William de Randworth
• 1444 - William de Pooley
• 1483 - Thomas de Framlingham
• 1505 - Edmund Lichfield
• 150? - Robert Brommer
• 1509 - Augustine Rivers
• 1529 - Thomas Manning alias Sudburn

External links

• Butley Priory

See also

• List of monastic houses in Suffolk
• List of monastic houses in England