St Mary Priory, Swine
St Mary Priory, Swine
The Priory Church of St Mary the Virgin at Swine, in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire, is a Grade I parish church that incorporates the eastern part of a Cistercian nunnery church.
- Location
- Swine, Yorkshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Yorkshire
- City / town
- Swine
- Address
- Main Street, Swine, Yorkshire, HU11 4JE
- Postcode
- HU11 4JE
- Built
- c.1180; early C14 and C15; west tower rebuilt 1787; C19 porch and vestry
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Mary
- Diocese
- York
- Parish
- Swine with Ellerby
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Transitional and Decorated
- Materials
- Magnesian limestone ashlar; Welsh slate roof
- Grid reference
- TA 134 358
- Opening hours
- Sorry, there are no regular opening times for this church.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Robert de Verli founded a Cistercian nunnery here in the twelfth century, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and confirmed by papal bull in 1177. The house surrendered at the Dissolution on 9 September 1539. The present parish church, listed by Historic England as formerly the east appendix to the nuns’ church, dates from about 1180, with early fourteenth- and fifteenth-century work. The west tower was rebuilt in 1787; porch and vestry are nineteenth-century. Walls are magnesian limestone ashlar under a Welsh slate roof. The church was listed Grade I on 16 December 1966 (list entry 1083427).
Interior fittings include a pulpit dated 1619, eight misericord stalls, reused screens of about 1531, and alabaster effigial tombs of the Hilton family (later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries). The nunnery earthworks around the church are a scheduled monument (1007750).
The legal parish is Swine with Ellerby, in the Diocese of York.