Qualla: Gisborough Priory

Gisborough Priory: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sandy Gerrard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Chaloner came back from Rome in the 1590s with a secret and a problem. He had visited the Pope's alum works at Tolfa, noticed that the soil there matched the soil on his estate at Guisborough, and decided to break the papal monopoly on the mordant that fixed dye to wool. Workmen were smuggled out of Italy to set up alum production at Belman Bank, just below the old priory ruins. Chaloner was excommunicated for his troubles. The priory itself was already a wreck by then, dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540, but its single surviving wall - the soaring eastern gable of the presbytery, pierced by its great empty window - had become something stranger than a ruin. It had become beautiful.

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Image: Sandy Gerrard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Gisborough Priory: The Wall That Survived

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Prioryman, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Henry VIII's commissioners came for Gisborough Priory in 1540, they took everything: the lead off the roof, the bells from the tower, the gold leaf from the painted vaulting bosses. Twenty-four priors had ruled here since William de Brus founded the Augustinian house in 1119...

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Image: Prioryman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gisborough Priory: An Early Taste for Ruins

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit habiloid, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the eighteenth century, a ruin was simply an unfinished demolition. Then came Romanticism, and Claude Lorrain, and the fashion for picturesque landscapes. Suddenly the nobility wanted ruins on their estates. Gisborough's east window was one of the first monastic remains in...

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Image: habiloid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Gisborough Priory: Dragons on the Steps

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. The Chaloners built their landscape around the ruin. A long terrace ran the length of the grounds. A ha-ha kept the cattle out. Two carved sea-wolves flanked a flight of steps - heraldic creatures from the family coat of arms - but locals were sure they were dragons, and the step...

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Image: CC BY-SA 4.0

Gisborough Priory: The Ghost and the Treasure

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Prioryman, CC BY-SA 3.0. Local folklore insists the priory is haunted. A monk in a black habit returns every year at midnight on the year's first new moon, lowering a ghostly drawbridge across a vanished moat to check that the buried treasure of Gisborough is undisturbed. Another legend places that treas...

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Image: Prioryman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gisborough Priory: Bones in the Soil

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Prioryman, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Captain Thomas Chaloner and William Downing Bruce cut a trench across the site in 1865, they found a stone coffin holding the skeleton of a tall man, thought to be Robert de Brus, one of seven members of the Bruce family buried here. They found the remains of forty-seven peo...

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Image: Prioryman | CC BY-SA 3.0