Alvingham Priory

Alvingham Priory
Location within Lincolnshire
General information
Location	Alvingham Lincolnshire
Town or city	Alvingham
Country	England
Coordinates	53°24′06″N 0°03′22″E / 53.40175°N 0.05614°E / 53.40175; 0.05614
Construction started	1148
Completed	1154
Demolished	1538

Alvingham Priory was a Gilbertine priory in St. Mary, Alvingham, Lincolnshire, England. The Priory, established between 1148 and 1154, was a "double house", where religious of both sexes lived in two separate monasteries. They did not commonly communicate with one another, and there was an internal wall dividing their priory church. The superior of every Gilbertine house was the prioress, the prior being really an official of her house.

The priory has left few visible remains. However, although the priory church has not survived, there are two churches within the priory's former precinct, both of which are pre-Reformation structures and appear to have been founded by the Anglo-Saxons. St Adelwold's church (the parish church of Alvingham) is the only church in England which is dedicated to St. Adelwold.St Mary's Church was originally a chapel belonging to the priory. It became the parish church of North Cockerington at the dissolution and is now under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

The cartulary of the priory is preserved at the Bodleian Library. The priory was active until most of its inhabitants died from the Black Death. Men and women continued to join the house until the sixteenth century when all the monasteries of the Gilbertine Order were dissolved. Following the surrender of the house on 29 September 1538 pensions were paid to twenty people: a prior, seven canons, a prioress and eleven nuns.

Alvingham Priory was located until its dissolution in Alvingham village. The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book (Aluingeham, meaning "Homestead of the Ælfingas (the tribe of Ælf)".). The village is surrounded by agricultural land, and lies on a small back road leading east out of Louth, Lincolnshire, called Alvingham Road. In the eighteenth century, a canal, the Louth Navigation, was constructed near the priory site: it survives as a drainage system.