Sempringham
The medieval village and Priory of Sempringham in Lincolnshire have vanished. The
only building left standing is the evocative and beautiful parish church of St Andrew’s,
built around 1100AD and standing alone in a field set back from the road. Aerial
photographs of the surrounding area give tantalising glimpses of what was a complex
medieval settlement. Walls, buildings and many other features, including the nearby
mansion can be identified.
The area was home to Sempringham Priory, the mother house of the only purely English
religious order and arguably the most important religious site in England. In 1131,
Gilbert founded the religious order by taking in ‘seven maidens’ who he had taught
as children. With help from Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, he set up religious buildings
in a cloistered enclosure to the north of St Andrews Church.
This small religious community soon became a focus of attention and others were
attracted to join it. The order became so successful that in 1139, construction
began on a larger priory to the south of the church. The Priory was a dual community
made up of cannons and nuns, lay brothers and lay sisters. The cannons followed
Augustinian rules and the nuns followed the rules of St Benedict. Gilbert modified
the rules for the Gilbertines and in 1147, they were formalised into ‘The Institutes
of Sempringham’
Because Gilbertine houses were a dual order, all the buildings had to be duplicated.
The churches had a wall down the centre to divide the men from the women. They were
allowed to hear each other but under no circumstances could they see each other.
The Priory was dissolved in 1538 and the site came into the hands of the Clinton
family. The Clintons demolished the Priory and re-used the building materials to
construct a mansion. Today barely anything remains above ground of the priory or
the mansion.
In recent years, a geophysical survey and field walking on a five metre grid on
the site were undertaken by English Heritage. A total of 47,000 objects were collected
dating from prehistoric to post medieval periods, including artefacts from the priory.
The lines of walls and buildings, a precinct and the possible location of a gatehouse
have been identified.