Bromholm Priory ruins, Bacton, Norfolk

Hard to imagine today, Bromholm was famous across the land for its miracle-working fragment of the True Cross, which brought pilgrims and wealth in great measure

Highlights

• Former monastic shrine of relic of the true Cross

There is forgotten and neglected, and then there is Bromholm Priory. Where so many other sacred sites in the region of East Anglia have seen at least partial attempts at revival, Bromholm is yet to be restored as a place of spiritual retreat. It seems unlikely to claim that its best years lie ahead of it, at least in terms of modern pilgrimage, but Bromholm’s peaceful ruins are a testament to a once powerful centre of Christian devotion. It still retains a vestige of its medieval spirit, just enough to merit a modern-day pilgrimage.

The ruins can only be admired from a distance unless the private landowner is holding an open day, although you can still touch the medieval gatehouse, which is on a public road. The monastery has left its mark both in the landscape and in literature alike and is an interesting place to ponder the fate of a site once celebrated throughout the land.

Geoffrey Chaucer, whose literary credentials when it comes to pilgrimage have no equal, refers to this place and its miracle-working relic of the True Cross in The Reeve’s Tale, the frightened miller’s wife crying out its name in the night. The ‘holy cross of Bromeholme’, as Chaucer puts it, was every bit as famous among working people as the tale suggests. A thought to reckon with amid the tumbling walls of what remains of this once-mighty Cluniac monastery.

Only the gatehouse, chapter house and one wall of the priory church hint at the riches such popular devotion once brought to this quiet stretch of Norfolk coastline. The monastery was founded in 1113, and the cross was donated to it in 1223 by a chaplain who had been in the Holy Land on a crusade. Bromholm was apparently the last of many monasteries where he tried to present his precious relic to sceptical monks.

Upon its acceptance and veneration as a true relic, a sudden rush of miracles repaid the faith of Bromholm’s community, with 19 people being cured of blindness and a remarkable 39 being brought back to life, according to the intermittently reliable 15th-century historian John Capgrave. It would take a miracle of slightly less magnitude to bring Bromholm back from the dead, a peaceful spot that still flickers with traces of its spiritual energy.

Directions

Bromholm Priory, Abbey Farm, Abbey Street, Bacton NR12 0HA

W3W: styled.latitudes.plenty

GPS: 52.8466N 1.4841E

Although the church and chapterhouse ruins are on private land, the gatehouse is easily accessible, at the end of Abbey Street.