Butley Abbey

Butley Priory, sometimes called Butley Abbey, was a medieval monastic house in Butley in Suffolk, England, in the area of the Suffolk Heritage Coast. The only part surviving relatively intact is the impressive 14th-century gatehouse, which has been in use as a private dwelling for about 280 years. A small fragment of the priory church and some masonry of the former domestic range survives in agricultural use at the adjacent Abbey Farm. The gatehouse is a grade I listed building, and is now used as a venue for private functions, corporate events or retreats.

The Glanvill family were founders of Bromholm Priory, a Cluniac house, in Norfolk (1113), and the Benedictine nunnery of Bungay Priory in Suffolk (c. 1160). Butley Priory, founded in 1171, was the first of the monastic houses planned by Ranulf de Glanvill, (Chief Justiciar of England to King Henry II), and his wife Bertha, daughter of Theobald de Valoines (from whose estate Campsey Priory was founded in 1195). Ranulf was a military leader on Henry's behalf, and mentor to his children Richard and John, and of Hubert Walter, son of Hervey Walter and Maud de Valoines, sister of Bertha. He also laid foundations of authority in English common law in the Tractatus de Legibus.

The land chosen for the Priory, an estate called Brochous, came from the dowry of Bertha: the foundation coincided exactly with the building of nearby Orford Castle, of which Bartholomew de Glanvill was Constable, and just preceded the Great Revolt, in the suppression of which Ranulf played a conspicuous part. It was founded to be a house of 36 Augustinian canons under a prior, Gilbert, who had been a Precentor at Blythburgh Priory.

...
Wikipedia