Qualla: Clare Priory

Clare Priory: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The National Churches Trust, CC BY 2.0. In 1248, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, gave the Augustinian Friars their first English foothold on the banks of the River Stour in Suffolk. The friars in black habits walked the lanes around Clare village for nearly three centuries before Henry VIII's commissioners arrived in 1538 to close them down. For more than four hundred years after the suppression, the priory passed through private hands - barn, farmhouse, country residence. Then, in 1953, the Augustinians bought it back. The infirmary that had become a barn was restored to become a chapel again. Today, the friars are still in residence, the river still runs through the grounds, and somewhere beneath the chapel floor sleep the bones of medieval English royalty.

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Image: The National Churches Trust | CC BY 2.0

Clare Priory: First House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Boaden, CC BY-SA 2.0. Clare Priory was established in 1248 as the first house of the Augustinian Friars - the Hermits of St Augustine - in England, a friary and a cell of Bec Abbey in Normandy. Richard de Clare founded it as both a religious house and a piece of dynastic memory-making: the de Clares w...

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Image: Bill Boaden | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clare Priory: Royal Graves

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The priory church became, in time, a Plantagenet mausoleum. Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I and Countess of both Hertford and Gloucester, was buried here in 1307 in the Chapel of St Vincent that she had founded herself. Her funeral was one of the great public events of Clare's...

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Image: Roger Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clare Priory: Dissolution

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Boaden, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1538, the priory was suppressed under Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. The friars departed, the church was unroofed, and the buildings began the long slide into ruin that swallowed so many English religious houses. The villagers of Clare did what villagers across E...

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Image: Bill Boaden | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clare Priory: Return

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Boaden, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1953, the Augustinians purchased Clare Priory back. The choice of date was deliberate - exactly 705 years after the original foundation, and a moment when the post-war Catholic Church in England was confident enough to begin reclaiming its medieval foundations. The barn was re...

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Image: Bill Boaden | CC BY-SA 2.0