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Chicksands Priory:
Historical Buildings of Bedfordshire, England
Image Right - Chicksands Priory
Image By Ashley3D CC BY-SA 2.0, WIKI
The purpose of this project is to gather together as much information about Chicksands, Bedfordshire and to add links to Geni profiles of associated people.
- Type of Building:
- Condition:
- Location: Chicksands, Bedfordshire
- Category: Grade 1 Listed
- Date Listed:
- Coordinates
- OS Grid Coordinates:
- When Built: 1152 (founded)
- Architect:
- Built for/by:
- Owned by: MOD
- Webpage: Chicksand Priory
History
Note Names with Bold links are to Geni profiles or projects. Other links take you to external biographical web pages.
The Gilbertine priory of Chicksands was founded about 1152 by Rohese, Countess of Essex, and her second husband Payne de Beauchamp, Baron of Bedford. Payn and Rohese endowed the priory at its foundation with the church of Chicksands and other Bedfordshire lands. The priory was of the Gilbertine Order, a religious order formed by Gilbert of Sempringham (c. 1083-1189). It was only one of ten religious houses in England that housed both nuns and canons.
By 1200 it was one of the largest and wealthiest Gilbertine houses. Fleeing the wrath of King Henry II after the Council of Northampton in 1164, Archbishop Thomas Becket is said to have spent a short time at Chicksands Priory on his way out of England.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the priory passed to the Snowe family and then in 1576 to the Osborn family, who owned it for almost 400 years.
Chicksands was the residence of the famous letter-writer Dorothy Osborne between her birth in 1627 and her marriage in 1654.
Elements of the original building remain, but it has been altered over the years, not least in 1740 by the architect Isaac Ware and in 1813 by James Wyatt, who designed the entrance hall, staircase and porch in the Gothic Revival style.
The Crown Commissioners bought the Chicksands Priory estate on 15 April 1936, later renting it to Gerald Bagshawe, who lived there until it was requisitioned by the Royal Navy.
In 1940, after a few months of naval occupation, the RAF followed and it became known, firstly, as RAF Chicksands Priory. In 1950 the United States Air Force took over and continued on the site as a "listening post" until September 1995.
The group "Friends of Chicksands Priory" was established in 1975 and tours of the building were offered to the general public until the summer of 1996. They returned to reopen the priory, following intense restoration during 1997 and 1998, in the spring of 1999. There were reports, at the time that the USAF pulled out of the base, in the local press ("The Comet") ) and local radio (BBC Three Counties Radio) that some of the departing personnel were taking "souvenirs" from the old buildings, causing damage and loss. Neither the US nor the British authorities would confirm this. In 2001 the Channel 4 TV programme Time Team excavated sections of the site, uncovering part of what was believed to be the Infirmary cloister and several graves, and revealing possible details of the ground plan. The programme suggested that the Nuns' cloister lay under what is today a cobbled courtyard.
References Found
People Associated with Chicksands Priory
…in chronological order
Sources, References and Further Reading
- Chicksands Priory - History
- Video Timeteam
- Campton & Chicksands
- [http://www.army.mod.uk/intelligence/32259.aspx MOD
'WIKI Chicksands Priory Information shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License - see Creative Commons Licenses
Related Publications • Binns, A. Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales, 1066-1216 (1989)
• Graham, R. St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (1901)
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