Croyland Abbey, Wellingborough

Croyland Abbey
Shown within Northamptonshire
Basic information
Geographic coordinates	52°18′00″N 0°41′37″W / 52.3001°N 0.6935°WCoordinates: 52°18′00″N 0°41′37″W / 52.3001°N 0.6935°W

Croyland Abbey is a manor house (currently used as offices), in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

History

The building was never an abbey.^[1] It is named after Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire, for which it was a monastic grange from the 10th century. Although there was never an Abbey here, There were monks here that lived and worshiped at the Manor house, attached to the grounds is a beautiful Tithe Barn. An Ironstone Tithe Barn, dating back to the 15th Century, surviving a fire in 1972. It is the only remaining building that was attached to the medieval grange that occupied the adjacent site. Tithes and rent were paid (usually in kind) at the barn by local peasant people.

The present structure is Jacobean and was constructed in the 17th-century.^[1] It has been, however, it has been heavily altered and rebuilt; with large parts of the 17th-century house demolished in the early 19th-century.^[1]

However, visible traces of the medieval grange still exist, in the form of a 12th-century doorway.^[1]

The Abbey adjoins Croyland Hall, originally a farmhouse, which used to be home to Wellingborough Heritage Centre, until 2006 when, renamed Wellingborough Museum, it relocated to the building that used to be "Dulleys swimming baths" in Castle Way, with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Both Croyland Hall and Croyland Abbey are now occupied as offices by Wellingborough Borough Council.

References

1. Parishes: Wellingborough', A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 4 (1937), pp. 135-146. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66335 Date accessed: 14 June 2013.