Neasham Priory is a priory

Priory

A priory is a house of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or religious sisters , or monasteries of monks or nuns .The Benedictines and their offshoots , the Premonstratensians, and the...

 founded for a community of Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 nuns before 1157. Located on the River Tees near Sockburn

Sockburn

Sockburn is a village and civil parish in County Durham, in England. It is situated at the bottom of a loop of the River Tees, south of Darlington, known locally as the Sockburn Peninsula. Today, there is not much there apart from an early nineteenth-century mansion, a ruined church and a farmhouse...

, County Durham

County Durham

County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

, it was the only such institution in the county to be independent of Durham Cathedral

Durham Cathedral

The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham is a cathedral in the city of Durham, England, the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Durham. The Bishopric dates from 995, with the present cathedral being founded in AD 1093...

 Priory. It was apparently never wealthy or notable.

History

The priory was founded around 1150 by Emma, daughter of Waldef the thegn

Thegn

The term thegn , from OE þegn, ðegn "servant, attendant, retainer", is commonly used to describe either an aristocratic retainer of a king or nobleman in Anglo-Saxon England, or as a class term, the majority of the aristocracy below the ranks of ealdormen and high-reeves...

 of Hepple

Hepple

Hepple is a small village and parish in rural Northumberland, west of Rothbury, which provides most of its local services. It is on the edge of the Northumberland National Park, and lies on the bank of the river Coquet, at a location which was on the Coquet Stop Line, of which a pillbox remains...

.

In the 15th century an investigation was conducted by the Bishop of Durham as a result of some misbehaviour by members of the community.

On 29 December 1540, the prioress Jane Lawson surrendered the house to agents of the King, and the priory was presumably dissolved

Dissolution of the Monasteries

The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...

 at around that time. The house was acquired by her brother, James Lawson.

There are no visible remains of the priory, but since the 19th century a house known as Neasham Abbey has stood on its approximate site. A solitary wall containing a reconstructed Gothic window now stands in Darlington

Darlington

Darlington is a market town in the Borough of Darlington, part of the ceremonial county of County Durham, England. It lies on the small River Skerne, a tributary of the River Tees, not far from the main river. It is the main population centre in the borough, with a population of 97,838 as of 2001...

town centre, and is purported to have come from the priory. A more reliable remnant, however, is a large stone carving on display in the treasury at Durham Cathedral.

Further reading

• 'House of Benedictine nuns: Priory of St Mary, Neasham', A History of the County of Durham: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 106-08