Amesbury Priory

Amesbury Priory

Location within Wiltshire
Monastery information
Full name	Priory of St Mary and St Melor
Other names	Amesbury Abbey
Order	Fontevraud
Established	1177
Disestablished	1539
Mother house	Fontevraud Abbey
Dedicated to	St Mary and St Melor
Diocese	Salisbury
People
Founder(s)	Henry II of England
Important associated figures	Edward I of England; Eleanor of Provence, Queen of England; Mary of Woodstock; Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany; Eleanor of Brittany; Isabel of Lancaster; Sybil Montagu
Site
Location	Amesbury, Wiltshire, England
Coordinates	51°10′26″N 1°47′02″W / 51.174°N 1.784°W / 51.174; -1.784
Grid reference	SU152417
Visible remains	The Church of St Mary and St Melor, Amesbury, is possibly the priory church or the church of the men
Public access	yes

Amesbury Priory was a Benedictine monastery at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, belonging to the Order of Fontevraud. It was founded in 1177 to replace the earlier Amesbury Abbey, a Saxon foundation established about the year 979. The Anglo-Norman Amesbury Priory was disbanded at the Dissolution of the monasteries and ceased to exist as a monastic house in 1539.^[1]

While the earlier Amesbury Abbey had been exclusively a nunnery or house of women, its successor, Amesbury Priory, following the particular structures of its parent Order of Fontevraud, was both a convent of nuns and a corresponding monastery of men. Both were governed locally by a prioress and ultimately by the Abbess of Fontevraud, in Anjou, part of the territories in what is now France that were then ruled by the English royal house.

Nothing remains of the priory above ground, its site having been used for a mansion which re-uses the name Amesbury Abbey.^[2]