The Abbey of St Benet' at Holme beside the River Bure, Norfolk Broads, England UK
The Abbey of St Benet at Holme lies beside the River Bure, close to the confluence with the River Ant, in the Norfolk Broads. It is said to have been founded on the site of a 9th century monastery where the hermit Suneman was martyred by the Danes. About the end of the 10th century it was rebuilt by one Wulfric. A generation later, c. 1022, King Canute conferred on it his nearby manors of Horning, Ludham and Neatishead. It was the only Norfolk monastery founded in the Anglo-Saxon period which continued in use throughout the Middle Ages – the only comparable ones in East Anglia were the royal abbeys at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and Ely in Cambridgeshire. However St Benet’s was largely abandoned after the closure of the monastery in the 1530s, because of its inaccessible location. The buildings have been almost completely demolished except for the gatehouse and the wind pump later built onto it. But the layout of the ground works is still visible on the ground. The Norfolk Archaeological Trust bought the main part of the site from the Crown Estate in 2002, and the gatehouse and mill from the Diocese of Norwich in 2004.
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Photo credit: © John Worrall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: abandoned, abbey, anglo-saxon, archaeological, benet, benets, broadland, broads, bure, demolished, derelict, ecclesiastical, england, gatehouse, holme, ludham, marsh, monastery, norfolk, pump, reed, reeds, remote, river, ruin, st, trust, uk, wind, winter
