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Mount Grace Priory, is the best preserved and most accessible of the ten medieval Carthusian houses (charterhouses) in England. Set in woodlands, it was founded in 1398 by Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey, the son of King Richard II's half-brother Thomas, Earl of Kent, it was the last monastery established in Yorkshire, and one of the few founded anywhere in Britain in the period between the Black Death (1349–50) and the Reformation.

Mount Grace Priory was a fairly small establishment, with space for a prior and twenty-three monks. It consisted of a church and two cloisters. The northern cloister had sixteen cells whilst the southern had five cells, Frater and Prior's house and the Chapter House. To the west stood the lay brothers' quarters and the guest house.

The priory was closed in 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. The priory was sold and the religious buildings were partially dismantled or left to fall into ruins. The ruins of the guest-house of the priory were incorporated into two later houses: a seventeenth-century manor and the larger house of 1900–01. The Manor House at the priory was decorated in Arts and Crafts style under the ownership of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, a wealthy industrialist.

The site was given to the nation by the Bell family in 1953. It is now owned by the National Trust and managed by English Heritage.

The priory ruins are Grade I-listed (English Heritage Building ID: 332435 Link British Listed buildings). The manor house/guesthouse is also listed Grade II* by English Heritage (English Heritage Building ID: 332434 Link British Listed Buildings).


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