Today’s picture is a scan of the cover of a walk guide round Bridlington’s Old Town, the Old Town area with its fine Georgian and Victorian buildings being inland from the Harbour front and the beach. The drawing shows, like the previous picture, the Priory church’s west end, the differences in the building styles of the two church towers being explained by the building’s architectural history. Two other churches with similar west ends are Ely cathedral and St. Margaret’s church, Kings Lynn.
Soon after the Reformation it was decided that the full church building at Bridlington was too large to maintain so the east end of the church today is the bricked-up chancel arch of the original Priory church, the foundation stones of the original chancel walls, pillars of the arcading and location of the high altar are visible in the grass of the churchyard.
As is usually the case none of the other priory buildings survives intact except the Gatehouse (witness Thornton Abbey site near Goxhill, North Lincolnshire) here known as The Bayle or Bayle Gate which has been in civic ownership since the Reformation, currently a small museum.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Augustinian Priory at Bridlington prospered from endowments, the physical majesty of the church building standing testimony to this.
In 1124 East Yorkshire’s second priory of Augustinian canons was founded at Kirkham (remember we are including this as Claire Cross includes it in her study, s.p.b.s) and only 15 years later some canons were sent away from Kirkham to start another priory at Thornton (see above) which was to become a great priory like Bridlington. Although some standing ruins survive at Kirkham (s.p.b.s) the abbey here, although well endowed, never achieved the status of Bridlington Priory.
The early 12th century was a time of many monastic establishments being founded.
(to be continued – Warter and N. Ferriby).