The early history of the monastery has to be told tentatively since it is difficult to reconcile the surviving sources with what is known of the bigger picture of the development of the area.

With this new endowment, under the auspices of the Bishop of Elmham, the original community was reinforced or replaced by a party consisting of half of the monks of St Benet's Abbey under Prior Uvius or Ufi.

The work was completed by the second abbot, Thurstan, who when he died in 1064 is reported to have been buried before the altar in the chapel of St Michael within the abbey church.

[8] At the time of the Norman Conquest of England, King Harold Godwinson put the abbot of St Benet's, in charge of defending the East Anglian coast against invasion.

The involvement with military naval matters was naturally incumbent upon the abbot, as upon bishops and monastic superiors throughout England, in so far as he was a prominent public personage and landowner in the area and hence an integral element in the feudal system.

[15] After the Conquest, William the Conqueror pursued those seen as having supported the defeated Harold and Abbot Aelfwold was outlawed and exiled for a time to Denmark,[16] and the abbey's estates suffered encroachments by neighbouring landowners and a general campaign of systematic harassment by the tenants of the upcoming Norman magnate Sir Roger Bigod,[17][18] whom the Domesday Book gives as holding 187 lordships in Norfolk and another 117 in Suffolk.

The site was not immune to natural disasters and in the 13th and 14th centuries there were incidents where violent storms on the coast forced the sea to break through the dunes, causing damage to the abbey.

[23] The abbey also remained vulnerable to hostile incursions by water and in 1327 by royal licence the site was enclosed by a wall with battlements, isolated traces of which still survive.

[24] That the abbey continued to have connections to the court may be shown by the fact that the man who became abbot in 1126 was Conrad, who has been identified with the monk who till then had been prior of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, and who had been confessor to King Henry I.

Hugh was an illegimitate half-brother to Cardinal William of the White Hands and to Count Henry I of Champagne who was married to Marie, elder daughter of King Louis VII of France.

Later he was made abbot of St Benet's (1146-1150) thanks to his uncle King Stephen (or Henry of Blois),[27][28] the appointment receiving papal confirmation in 1147.

The story in John of Oxnead's Chronicle[29] is that he was a capable and serious abbot but made powerful enemies who framed him by having a woman slipped into his bed and then sent armed men to punish the supposed crime by castrating him.

[30] Despite elements of success, both material and spiritual, the abbey may have struggled to compete in religious prestige, lacking as it did the relics of an important saint.

From various surviving illustrations, it appears that a first windmill-powered land drainage was erected around the middle of the 18th century, and some decades later was replaced by another, attached to the front of the ruined gatehouse.

In 1993 the main part of the site was bought by the Crown Estate and in 2002 sold to the Norfolk Archaeological Trust which in 2004 purchased the gatehouse and mill from the Diocese of Norwich.

In recent years essential conservation repairs have been carried out on the ruins and visits to the site have been facilitated by the laying out of a new car park and access paths, while large numbers of volunteers undertook graffiti recording, molehill and wildlife surveys, and maintenance and provided guides.

[41] During the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Vicar General was said to have noted the poverty in which the brothers of St Benet-at-Home committed to live in by contrast to the opulence of the Bishop of Norwich.

Every year on the first Sunday of August the Bishop of Norwich, in their role as Abbot, arrives at St Benet's standing in the bow of a wherry, to meet pilgrims, and preach an annual service amongst the ruins of the abbey.