Kersey Priory
priory in Kersey, Babergh, England, UK
Kersey Priory was a priory in Kersey, Suffolk, England.
It was founded before 1218 by Thomas de Burgh, Castellan of Norwich, and brother of Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, as a hospital dedicated to St Mary the Blessed Virgin and St Anthony the Abbot until it was later converted into a monastery for a community of Austin Canons. The hospital itself became the house of the prior.
The priory was dissolved in 1443 and the next year ownership of the property was granted to King's College, Cambridge.
Kersey Priory is a scheduled monument. The house on the site called "The Priory" became a Grade II listed building on 23 January 1958, part of the priory kitchen is said to be incorporated in the house.
Seal
The twelfth-century seal of Kersey Priory is a pointed oval bearing a bust of the Blessed Virgin crowned in clouds, below is the head of St. Anthony between them is a sun and crescent moon. It has the legend round the edge of ‘Sigill' sce Marie et sci Antonii de Kerseia’
Priors of Kersey
Richard Waleys, died 1331
Robert de Akenham, elected 1331
John Calle, resigned 1387
John de Polstede, elected 1387
John Buche, elected 1394
John Dewche, elected 1411
Nicholas Bungaye, resigned 1422
Richard Fyn, elected 1422
John Duch, elected 1431
William Woodbridge, elected 1432
Dissolution
When King's College took over the Manor property, the village church tower was completed and the building enlarged to compensate for the loss of the Priory church. Today the Priory chapel is a ruin situated on private property next to a medieval farmhouse.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kersey Priory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.