Carrow Abbey

Carrow Abbey stands in Bracondale, on the eastern edge of Norwich. The remains belong to a Benedictine priory founded around 1146 by two sisters, Seyna and Lescelina, on land granted by King Stephen. Originally a small house for twelve nuns, it became a priory dedicated to St Mary of Carhowe. The nuns managed local wills and once ran the gallows for the area, while the anchoress Julian of Norwich trained here in the 1350s. The abbey’s fortunes rose and fell with notable prioresses such as Edith Wilton, who won court battles against the monks of Holy Trinity. In the 15th century Margaret Pygot restored its finances and added a dormitory and mill. After the Dissolution it passed to Sir John Shelton, then to the Martineau family, who built Bracondale Hall nearby and reused the abbey’s stained glass in a Gothic revival lodge. Today the flint-and-brick ruins show three main parts: the early-16th-century parlour with its Prioress’s oriel window, the hall block, and a late-19th-century wing added by the Colman family. Archaeologists have traced Norman walls and Tudor doorways still bearing the rebus of the last prioress, Isabella Wygun. The site sits within quiet woodland on the edge of the city, where visitors can walk among the fragments of a once-thriving nunnery.