It was probably the first nunnery built in England, having been traditionally founded in 630[1] by Saint Eanswith, the daughter of King Eadbald of Kent, who was the son of Saint Æthelberht, the first Christian king among the English.
Like many other similar foundations, it was destroyed by the Danes and the ruins subsequently fell into the sea.
In 1095, another monastery for Benedictine monks was erected on a different site by Nigel de Mundeville, Lord of Folkestone.
As with its predecessor, the cliff on which the monastery was built was gradually undermined by the sea, and William de Abrincis, in 1137, gave the monks a new site, that of the present parish church of Folkestone.
Being an alien priory it was occasionally seized by the king, when England was at war with France, but after a time it was made denizen and independent of the mother-house in Normandy and thus escaped the fate which befell most of the alien priories in the reign of Henry V.[2] It continued to the time of the dissolution and was surrendered to the king on 15 November 1535.