At the end of the blog published on 12th February I promised a quote which summarises Gilyard-Beer’s overview (s.p.b.s) of monastic history, ‘Throughout the whole of its history there has been a tendency for monasticism to fall away from its primitive zeal and austerity, giving rise to one attempt after another within the monastic body to restore observances to their early form’.
In that vein, and returning to our history of East Yorkshire’s monastic sites, the ‘convents’ of Augustinian canons (s.p.b.s) followed close on the heals of the Norman invasion. All Augustinian canons were eligible to be parish priests, rather than just cloistered monks, although they lived in a communal environment. They were often known as ‘black canons’ from the colour of their woollen habit (cloak) – Benedictine and Cluniac monks (none in East Yorkshire) also wore black habits and were known as ‘black monks’.
East Yorkshire’s first Augustinian canon’s priory was started at Bridlington in 1113 and founded by Walter de Gant, a second-generation Norman baron. As with other convents, over the years property was endowed to the priory from which the priory received an income. Monastic ‘cartularies’ often survive and give a description of property, at the time written, endowed to the priory. ‘Property’ could take many forms – land, manors, buildings, churches (from which point on the priory owned the advowson of that church and were thus entitled to receive the ‘great tithes’ but from which they had to maintain the chancel part of the church building), woods, ships etc.
The present Priory church beside The Bolt and Church Green in Bridlington’s Old Town was, up to the Reformation of the late 1530s, the church of the priory of the Augustinian canons. The nave of this building already served as a parish church before the Reformation and indeed a pre-monastic church here was recorded in the Survey of 1086.
The scan above is taken from a pre-war church booklet I have.
(to be continued).