Exeter monastery

Exeter’s medieval monasteries once stood where the city’s cathedral now rises. The earliest was a late 7th-century Saxon minster founded on the remains of a Roman basilica in Cathedral Yard. King Æthelred of Wessex refounded it in 868, but Viking raids forced its abandonment until King Edgar restored it in 968. Benedictine monks arrived in 932 under King Æthelstan, building an abbey church that later gave way to St Mary Major. Augustinian canonesses established a nunnery nearby around 968, all clustered within what became the cathedral close. The Norman period brought several priories and friaries to Exeter. The Benedictine Priory of St Nicholas opened in 1087, while Cluniac monks founded St James Priory in 1146. Dominican Blackfriars arrived before 1232, followed by Franciscan Greyfriars before 1240. Women’s houses included Polsloe Priory, founded about 1159, and the Nunnery of St Augustine. Most were dissolved in the 16th century, yet fragments remain embedded in later buildings. Today a visitor can still trace these monasteries. St Nicholas’ Priory preserves its guest wing and kitchen as a museum, once an Elizabethan town house. The refectory survives as a Georgian residence. Polsloe Priory’s west range, built of red sandstone, stands near its original site. These remnants sit beside the cathedral, itself built on the foundations of the Saxon minster and Benedictine abbey.