Isleham priory: an alien Benedictine priory 100m west of St Andrew's Church

Scheduled area

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History & significance

Isleham Priory is a Benedictine alien priory located approximately one hundred metres west of St Andrew's Church in Cambridgeshire. Founded in the twelfth century as a dependent house of the French monastery of Saint-Saëns in Normandy, it remained under foreign control until the confiscation of alien priories during the Hundred Years' War. The surviving remains, which comprise substantial earthwork features and fragmentary stone structures, reflect the modest scale typical of such dependent houses, which rarely achieved the architectural grandeur of major independent monasteries. The priory site was eventually dissolved in the sixteenth century, following the Reformation, leaving only these archaeological traces of its medieval occupation and religious function.

Isleham priory: an alien Benedictine priory 100m west of St Andrew's Church is a scheduled monument protected by Historic England under reference 1013278. View the official record →

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