March 2021

Above is an illustration of three seals for official documents from Swine Nunnery as reproduced in Thomas Thompson’s book. One shows a seated Cistercian nun, probably an abbess/prioress. Apart from the nunnery at Swine and the double house at Watton (see later) the other nunneries in the East Riding were small establishments. The nunnery at

Above is an 18th century engraving showing Swine church post Reformation but before the tower was rebuilt in 1787 (for the church today s.p.b.s). Clearly the church of the Cistercian nunnery had a crossing tower and transepts, the bricked-up entrance to the nave from the crossing tower shows a late-Norman arch testament to the initial

Given that nunneries were comparatively numerous in the East Riding, although all except Swine and Watton (see later) were small, it is worth dwelling on this issue for a while. The maintenance of a nunnery presented considerable logistical problems and Thompson (s.p.b.s) tries to address some of these. Given that the Cistercian Order defined what

Today’s picture is a photo. of Swine church taken from the south-east part of the churchyard, a photo. taken some years ago. Thompson (s.p.b.) wrote his history of Swine (s.p.b.) in an age less commited to conservation than our own, in his Preface he writes ‘The rapid decay of the antiquities of the country by

The picture above, as with the previous blog, is the frontispiece of a book published in 1824 and entitled ‘A History of the Church and Priory of Swine in Holderness’, thus a history of the parish and of the Cistercian nunnery which existed there up to the Reformation of the late 1530s. The author was