page_title: Nun Monkton
section_title: Medieval Benedictine nunnery
hierarchical_section_title: Nun Monkton / History / Medieval Benedictine nunnery
caption_attribution_description: English: Rusticated cottage, Nun Monkton, North Yorkshire, England. Close to the church, and within the gates of the Priory estate, is this 18thC cottage.
context_page_description: Nun Monkton is a village and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It is situated 8 miles northwest of York at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Nidd. Cottages and houses are grouped around a village green of 20 acres with a duck pond and a maypole. The Ouse is navigable for another 19 miles and river traffic played an important part in the village's life until the middle of the twentieth century.
  Until 1974 Nun Monkton was in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
context_section_description: A hermitage or small monastic settlement may have existed at Nun Monkton during the Anglian period in Northumbria, prior to the arrival of the Vikings, giving rise to the 'Monkton' part of the village's name. The arrival of the nuns came about a century after the Norman Conquest. In 1172 an Anglo-Norman landowner, Ivetta of the Arches, endowed a small Benedictine nunnery which owned the village and stood on the important ford route from York and Moor Monkton to the south and Beningbrough and Shipton to the north, coming across the river. These routes ended when the ferry was discontinued in the middle of the 20th century. The Priory existed until 1536 when it was dissolved by Henry VIII, despite a plea from his second wife, Anne Boleyn, that it be spared. Records suggest that some of the nuns, returned to their families with small pensions of £4 a year and still under monastic vows of celibacy, endured considerable hardship as a result of the closure of the convent.
caption: 18th century cottage in Priory grounds
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