West Dereham Abbey facts for kids
West Dereham Abbey was an important religious building, known as an abbey, located in Norfolk, England. It was a place where monks, called canons, lived and prayed many centuries ago.
Building a New Home for Prayer
St Mary's Abbey in West Dereham was started in 1188. A man named Hubert Walter, who was a very important church leader (the Dean of York), founded it in the village where he was born. This new abbey was meant to be like a "daughter house" to Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. It was built for a special group of religious men called canons regular from the Premonstratensian order.
The main purpose of the canons living there was to pray. They prayed for the souls of Hubert Walter, his parents, his brothers and sisters, and all his family and friends. The abbey was surrounded by a moat, which is a ditch filled with water, often for protection. Over time, West Dereham Abbey grew to become one of the biggest religious houses in Norfolk. In the late 1200s, it had as many as twenty-six canons living there. It was also quite rich, owning a lot of land and property.
Life Inside the Abbey
Church leaders would sometimes visit abbeys to check on how things were going. The last recorded visit to West Dereham Abbey happened on August 10, 1503. Bishop Redman of Ely found that some of the canons needed more teaching. So, he asked Brother Robert Watton to come back from university and help the prior (the head of the abbey) teach the other canons carefully. Another canon, Thomas Fychele, was removed from his role as subprior because he wasn't doing his job well. Other than these points, the bishop found that the abbey was in good condition and the rules were being followed properly.
The Abbey's End
A big change happened across England called the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This was when Henry VIII, the King of England, decided to close down many abbeys and monasteries. In 1536, an agent for Thomas Cromwell, a powerful advisor to the King, visited West Dereham Abbey. He reported that some of the canons wanted to leave their religious life and get married. They believed that the King's actions were a sign from God to allow this to happen.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the abbey's land and buildings were given by King Henry VIII to a man named Thomas Dereham of Crimplesham.
What Remains Today
A new house was built on the abbey's site in the late 1500s. This house was changed and made bigger in the 1690s by another Thomas Dereham. He had just returned from Italy, where he had been an envoy (a kind of ambassador) to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Most of this grand house was taken down around 1810. The part that was left was turned into a farmhouse. The ruins of this farmhouse were repaired in the 1990s and are now a protected historical site. Almost all of the original abbey buildings are gone, but their foundations are still buried underground. You can sometimes see these foundations from the air as "cropmarks," which are patterns in crops that show what's underneath. Other old earthworks and fishponds from the abbey's time can also still be seen.
