More information : (SE 59686695) Moxby Hall on site of (NAT) Moxby Priory (NR) (Benedictine founded prior to AD 1167) (NAT) (SE 59736685) Moat (NR) (SE 59676678) Moxby Mill (NR) (site of) (SE 59806686) Old Mill Dam (NAT) (1)
The Priory of St John the Evangelist, Moxby, was founded before 1167 for Benedictine nuns who came from Marton Priory (SE 56 NE 2), but imprecise records seem to indicate that they adopted the Augustinian rule sometime after 1310. At the suppression of the house in 1536 only eight nuns remained. (2)
The Nunnery, converted into a mansion after the dissolution, was later rebuilt incorporating foundations and some parts of the stone walls. It was later modernised into a farmhouse. (3)
Earthworks indicate the site of the mill on either side of the river. A stone trough, probably once a coffin, is in Moxby Priory farmyard. (4)
The earthworks consist of a much mutilated leat which extends from east of Moxby Hall a short distance southwards before bifurcating to 'enclose' a roughly rectangular area the southern end of which lies some 50m NE of the published site of the mill. In this southern corner the leat forms one side of a second enclosure about 50m square the other sides of which are defined by a wide flat-bottomed ditch 1m deep of moat or fishpond proportions. Published survey (25") revised.
It is not obvious what part, if any, the works played in the functioning of the mill, certainly no pond bay or dam is involved; alternatively they cannot be related to the general priory layout. (5)
Moxby Priory earthworks and its landscape has been surveyed at 1:500 scale by RCHME and published. Full report. (6-7)
SE 5974 6688. Augustinian Nunnery known as Moxby Priory including mill and post-Dissolution garden features. Scheduled (RSM) No 26938. (8)
The earthwork features associated with Moxby Priory were transcribed for the Vale of York project, based on the 1:1000 RCHME survey. Some additional features to the south (SE 5974 6677) were recorded from air photographs. (9) |