Arundel Priory

The Priory of St Nicholas was established at Arundel in West Sussex, England by Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, in 1102, when Gratian, a monk of Sées in Normandy, became first prior.

The priory was dissolved in 1380, when a college of the Holy Trinity with an adjoining hospice was established probably on the same site by Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel as a foundation to serve the needs of twenty aged poor men in the area and to provide education.

Further restoration work was undertaken in the middle of the nineteenth century, when in 1861 the south-east range was converted as a convent known as St Wilfrid’s Priory, as it remained until the 1950s.

At the same period the appearance of the north side of the courtyard was altered by the building of the funerary chapel of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk (d. 1860), which projects from the south side of the Fitzalan Chapel The Priory was run as a school by sisters of the (Catholic) Franciscan Order for the Duke of Norfolk; although it accepted young children from various backgrounds and economic circumstances, it also taught the dukes four daughters during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Classes were held there weekly, and on one or two very rare occasions in summer children were permitted to swim in the Duke's swimming pool, or to play ball games on the Duke's famous cricket pitch in the castle park.