Modeney Priory | |
Other Names: | Modney Priory Modeny Priory |
Order: | Benedictine |
Established: | Before 1291 |
Location: | Hilgay, Norfolk, England |
Public Access: | private |
Modeney Priory—also spelled Modney and Modeny—was a Benedictine priory in the civil parish of Hilgay, Norfolk, England. Located less than a mile east of the River Great Ouse, Modeney Priory was a cell of Ramsey Abbey.[1] Modeney Priory was founded before 1291 and dissolved . Its former location is now occupied by Modney Hall farmhouse. According to field research undertaken by Historic England in 1976: "There are no surface structural remains of the priory. Modney Hall has an 18th/19th century brick cased exterior, but according to a former owner parts of the interior date to the 15th [century]."[2]
On 18 April 1544, the Priory was granted to Robert Hagan, who licensed it to James Hawe on 4 February 1545. Francis Blomefield in his An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (1807) writes the following succession of owners: "from the Hawes, it came to the Willoughbys; and by Catherine, a daughter of Sir Henry Willoughby, to the Purefoys, and to the Greys, and the Astons, as in Southrey, and is now in Sir Robert Burdet."[3]