Mount Grace Priory - church view from monks cells
Mount Grace Priory was a Carthusian monastery founded in 1398. Carthusian monasteries differed from other monastic orders where monks lived communally. In Carthusian monasteries monks lived as hermits each in his in self-contained cells. Each cell had two floors and an outside garden for growing herbs. Access to each cell was from a door leading from the cloisters. The cell provided living and working space for the monk, and its own chapel as the monks said their daily offices and Mass alone most days. Monks would only encounter one another in the priory church for daily Matins and Vespers, and less frequently Mass. Consequently, the Carthusian priory churches were much smaller than the abbey churches at other orders such as Fountains Abbey.
Similarly, the monks only ate together in the refectory on Sundays, feast days or when there was a funeral of a brother. At other times the lay brothers brought food to the monks’ cells, passing it to the monk through a hatch by the cell door.
At the time of King Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries, Mount Grace was one of the wealthiest with an annual income of £313 in 1535, similar to that of Rievaulx Abbey. Mount Grace was finally supressed in December 1539.
After its closure, many of the monastic buildings were dismantled but the priory’s guest house was converted into a country house. At the end of the 19th century it was acquired by the industrialist Sir Lowthan Bell. He renovated and extended the house in the Arts and Crafts style and made repairs to the priory buildings. Sir Lowthan also reconstructed monk’s cell No. 8 on the north side of the Great Cloister. The estate was given to the treasury in lieu of death duties in 1944 and given to the National Trust. It was subsequently placed into the guardianship of the State (and now English Heritage) by the National Trust in 1955. Restoration of the house began in 1987, and the house opened to the public in 2010.
The gardens at the front of the house were renovated over the winter of 2017-18 by Chris Beardshaw to reflect the Arts and Crafts heritage of the house.
Mount Grace Priory - church view from monks cells
Mount Grace Priory was a Carthusian monastery founded in 1398. Carthusian monasteries differed from other monastic orders where monks lived communally. In Carthusian monasteries monks lived as hermits each in his in self-contained cells. Each cell had two floors and an outside garden for growing herbs. Access to each cell was from a door leading from the cloisters. The cell provided living and working space for the monk, and its own chapel as the monks said their daily offices and Mass alone most days. Monks would only encounter one another in the priory church for daily Matins and Vespers, and less frequently Mass. Consequently, the Carthusian priory churches were much smaller than the abbey churches at other orders such as Fountains Abbey.
Similarly, the monks only ate together in the refectory on Sundays, feast days or when there was a funeral of a brother. At other times the lay brothers brought food to the monks’ cells, passing it to the monk through a hatch by the cell door.
At the time of King Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries, Mount Grace was one of the wealthiest with an annual income of £313 in 1535, similar to that of Rievaulx Abbey. Mount Grace was finally supressed in December 1539.
After its closure, many of the monastic buildings were dismantled but the priory’s guest house was converted into a country house. At the end of the 19th century it was acquired by the industrialist Sir Lowthan Bell. He renovated and extended the house in the Arts and Crafts style and made repairs to the priory buildings. Sir Lowthan also reconstructed monk’s cell No. 8 on the north side of the Great Cloister. The estate was given to the treasury in lieu of death duties in 1944 and given to the National Trust. It was subsequently placed into the guardianship of the State (and now English Heritage) by the National Trust in 1955. Restoration of the house began in 1987, and the house opened to the public in 2010.
The gardens at the front of the house were renovated over the winter of 2017-18 by Chris Beardshaw to reflect the Arts and Crafts heritage of the house.