Monks Kirby Priory facts for kids

Monks Kirby Priory was a priory, at first Benedictine and later Carthusian, in Monks Kirby, Warwickshire, England.

It was founded in 1077 at what was then known as Kirkbury, by the Breton, Geoffrey de Wirche (or Guerche), who had been granted lands in the area as a reward for his support of William of Normandy. He granted some of his land and tithes, together with the church of Kirkbury and two priests, to establish a cell or priory of Benedictine monks subject to the Abbey of St. Nicholas at Angers.

Unusually, the text of the founding Charter for the Priory survives: the dedication took place on 1 July 1077 and the Charter tells us the names of the first monks – Geoffrey, Ranulf, Stephen, Maurice, Roger and Herman.

The priory was temporarily annexed to Axholme Charterhouse in 1396, but afterwards restored to Angers in 1399. In 1414 King Henry V again granted it to Axholme. When the monasteries were dissolved in 1538 in the Reformation, the priory was given by the King to Thomas Manning, Bishop of Ipswich. The property then changed hands several times over the course of the following 80 years until it came into the hands of the Fielding family, the Earls of Denbigh, with whom it descended for many years.

The priory church became the parish church of St Edith, Monks Kirby, which is a grade I listed building.

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  Monks of the Priory wrote to the Pope in 1360, "Christ has wrought many miracles in honour of His Mother in the church of the said priory." At the time of the 900th anniversary celebrations in 1977, the local community of Roman Catholic nuns presented a statue of the Virgin Mary to the church. This was almost certainly the first image of the Virgin Mary to be present in the Church since the Reformation.