And so to Hull.Friaries apart (see later) monasticism came late to Hull.
In 1378 Michael de la Pole founded a Carthusian Priory outside the town walls (still under construction at that time) on an open rural site north of the town. To have crossed on foot from the North Gate in the town walls to the monastic site would have then, almost certainly, involved threading around clay pits dug from which to make some of the vast amount of bricks needed in the construction of the town walls, the other clay digging site being to the west of the old town ditch. Today the monastic site is crossed by Charterhouse Lane with, at its east end, Charterhouse Lane School (no longer such) one of Hull’s fine board schools and built in 1881.
The Carthusian Order was, like many monastic orders (see original blogs in this section) an attemt to get back to some of the original purist ideas on monastic life. It is/was often described as austere and disciplined and was a male order only. The cloistral range of buildings was mostly made up of what might be described today as ‘prison-like’ cells, one for each monk of the community and in which they would remain for the bulk of the day and night in contemplation, study and prayer. The on-site church tended to be comparatively small with usually an aisleless nave and internal side chapels. Nothing remains of this original complex of buildings but there are some remains of a Carthusian monastery at Mount Grace Priory in a wooded setting at the foot of the escarpment of the Hambleton Hills, North Yorkshire, a site visible from the A19, a much-used route from Humberside to Teeside, Wearside and Tyneside. The picture above is of the site looking west and shows the crossing tower of the church and on the left-hand side the original entrance archway and a guest-house, much altered in the 17th century.
(to be continued).