The Monastic Precinct

The huge monastic enclosure was filled with buildings and dominated by the abbey church with its steeple. 
 
The abbey as it may have appeared around 1500. (Drawing by Jill Atherton) © English Heritage The ruins and foundations of the principal abbey buildings are arranged around a cloister and there are earthwork traces of many other structures, whose purpose or date is not known.

Thornton was founded in 1139 by William of Aumâle, one of several monasteries he established or patronized in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The abbey was an Augustinian monastery, its life of prayer and study framed by the terms of a rule originating in the writings of St Augustine of Hippo (d.430). Members of its community were entitled 'canons' and wore black habits.

The monastery was suppressed in 1539 during the Reformation. In 1602 the site was bought by a local MP, Sir Vincent Skinner, where he built a house which later collapsed. His family subsequently occupied a monastic building to the south-west of the abbey precinct, which is now a farm.