Grace Dieu Priory
The Friends’ second outing for 2025 found us assembling at the Museum at Ashby-de-la-Zouch on a Saturday morning in late September. Here our study focus was Grace Dieu Priory, an Augustinian nunnery whose ruins can still be viewed from the Loughborough to Ashby road.
We began our day with a talk and some slides, expertly delivered by Ken Hillier, who was clearly fascinated by the whole subject of medieval monasticism. The story started at the end, with the Dissolution of the priory and its surrender on the 27th October 1538. Sixteen women, who had known no other life, had to leave the Priory carrying all their possessions (although the blow was somewhat softened by them being granted a pension). The 38 lay men and women who were employed as servants at the Priory perhaps found themselves in a worse position. The story of the Priory had begun in 1239-1241, when it was founded by Roesia de Verdun, a wealthy widow. Grace Dieu housed an order of white nuns of the order of St Augustine the bishop. Roesia’s splendid tomb was transferred from the Priory to Belton church at the time of the Dissolution, but has since been found to be empty of her actual remains (which are rumoured to have been buried in the churchyard).
Many of the accounts that we know of monasteries come from the Bishop’s Visitations, and by their nature they tended to highlight the less desirable behaviours that were to be found in these institutions. Grace Dieu was no exception to this. They were meant to be poor and chaste, and to never leave the Priory precinct, but at least one cellaress was found to be travelling around the neighbourhood, rather than attending the required church services, sometimes riding pillion behind the (male) priory chaplain. The Priory also had several ‘good’ reports, however, it seems that it was by no means a den of iniquity.
After the Dissolution, the priory entered the hands of John Beaumont. He converted the Priory buildings to become his manor house, and the ruins we have today are as much of manor house as nunnery. Beaumont was stripped of his offices and estates in 1552 after falling into disgrace, but Grace Dieu was recovered by his widow some five years later. It then stayed with the Beaumonts until 1686 when it was sold to Sir Ambrose Phillipps of nearby Garendon Abbey. He wanted the estate, not the manor house, and a considerable part of it was then pulled down, and it entered its period of long, slow deterioration and became the haunt of ‘poets, artists, trespassers, and ghosts’. The Priory ruins and surrounding estate remained with the same family (although they became the March-Phillipps de Lisle family), and they built Grace Dieu manor house in the early nineteenth century. The manor was leased out for many years, then became a Catholic school, but is now a football academy. The trust running the school first leased the priory ruins to the Gace Dieu Trust and then sold them to them for a nominal sum.
Having been introduced to the history of the Priory we then took some time to tour the small but fascinating museum, before enjoying lunch and then setting off for the Abbey itself, a short car journey away.
There we met Ann Petty, our guide for the afternoon. We started off by exploring the very lovely woodland, still owned by the de Lisle family. Here we encountered two more ruins – the remains of the Charnwood Forest railway and the Charnwood Forest canal. Both built primarily to transport coal, both without connection to the wider rail or canal network, and so both destined to ultimately fail. The railway can be traced through a very obvious embankment and a fine viaduct, but the remains of the canal are somewhat harder to spot.
We finally reached the ruins of the Priory itself, and found them indeed to be atmospheric and romantic. Some test pitting has been done on the site, but because it is a scheduled monument the trust are very limited as to what they can do in terms of archaeological excavations. Many areas remain to be explored which could reveal more details as to the life of Grace Dieu in its 300 years as a nunnery and 150 years as a manor house. The trust had previously run ghost tours of the site, and we got to view some mysterious photographs from that period, showing figures lurking in the ruins that had not actually been there. I was very disappointed when I reviewed my photographs of the day and found only images of Friends and of some of the very many dog walkers that frequent the woods and the ruins.
Mandy de Belin
