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William Le Gros (c 1110–1179), Count of Aumale in Normandy and Lord of Holderness in Yorkshire, pledged to found a new Augustinian priory dedicated to St Mary.
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Day & month n/k, year 1148.
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Day n/k. Much of our knowledge of this comes from a chronicle completed in about 1533 but based on 13th-century and later documents that no longer survive.
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Day & month n/k. In 1261, according to the chronicle, 44 masons were paid to quarry 1,500 stones, before work began in 1264 on the great church.
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Day & month n/k. Work begins on the great church.
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Days & months n/k. 1282–1308 New chapter house built.
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Day & month n/k. The stock-keeper’s account for 1313, transcribed in the chronicle, shows that the abbey then kept nearly 8,000 sheep. Wool production contributed to most of Thornton’s gross annual revenue of £1,543, comparable to that of a major nobleman.
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Day & month n/k. Gross annual income £1543 - comparable to that of a major nobleman.
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Day & month n/k. Work carried out on enlargement of the cloister.
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Day & month n/k. Rebuilding of the refectory.
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Day & month n/k. Construction of a large granary.
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Day & month n/k. Construction of the gatehouse.
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Day & month n/k. Construction of a lady chapel at the east end of the church.
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Day & month n/k. In 1521 Thornton was described as ‘one of the goodliest houses’ of the Augustinian order in England.
Source: JS Brewer (ed), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, 3:1 (London, 1867), p 510 (accessed 23 January 2013). -
Day & month n/k. Gross annual income was £730, still a considerable sum.
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Thornton Abbey was suppressed on 12 December 1539, but none of the buildings were despoiled immediately.
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Day n/k. Early in October 1541 Henry VIII and Catherine Howard stay at Thornton Abbey.
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Day n/k. Henry VIII selects Thornton, among a small group of elite religious houses that also included Westminster Abbey, as a college for training priests for service in the newly established Church of England.
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Day & month n/k. Thornton College suppressed under Edward VI.
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Date n/k. Some time between supression of college in 1547 and 1602 the property was purchased by the Tyrwhitt family. They appear to have occupied the cloister buildings and laid out an adjacent garden.
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Day & month n/k. In 1602 Vincent Skinner (c 1540–1616) bought the site. He was an ambitious reformer connected to the powerful William Cecil, Lord Burghley, chief adviser to Elizabeth I. Skinner was knighted in 1603 and then served until 1609 as Auditor of the Receipt, a high court office. The staunchly Puritan Skinner apparently demolished most of the abbey buildings, leaving the gatehouse as a foil to his impressive new house, begun in about 1607, plans of which survive
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Day & month n/k. Work begins on Vincent Skinner's manor house. Skinner apparently demolished most of the abbey buildings, leaving the gatehouse as a foil to his impressive new house, plans of which survive.
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Date n/k. Skinner's manor house collapses. In 1697 the Lincolnshire diarist and antiquarian Abraham de la Pryme gloated that this ‘hall, when it was finished, fell quite down to the bare ground, without any visible cause and broke in pieces all the rich furniture that was therein’
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Day & month n/k. Skinner dies in High Holborn debtors’ prison.
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Day & month n/k. Lincolnshire diarist and antiquarian Abraham de la Pryme records that by 1697 Lady Anne Skinner (d.1707), the wife of Sir Vincent’s grandson, was living in a ‘large but somewhat low hall’ converted from one of the abbey buildings. This house, now named Abbot’s Lodge, survives.
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Day & month n/k. In 1816 Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Baron Yarborough (1749–1823), acquired the site to stop the damage caused by quarrying for roadstone, and took steps to turn it into a park.
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Day and month n/k. 1st Earl of Yarborough (1781–1846), son of 1st Baron Yarborough, instigated excavations in 1831 to expose the remains of the church, and reinstated the roof, floors and windows of the gatehouse, saving it from ruin.
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Days and months n/k. The 1st Earl encouraged visitors and sympathetic use of the site, including temperance movement rallies in 1848–51, attended by up to 19,000 people.
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Day and month n/k. In 1851, following further excavations, the first guidebook was produced at the suggestion of the 1st Earl Yarborough.
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Summer: exact days and months n/k. Each summer between 1866 and 1870 the 2nd Earl (1809–62), as commander of the Lincolnshire Light Horse, hosted a week-long army camp in the North Bail.
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Day & month n/k. In 1900 the 4th Earl (1859–1936) constructed a purpose-built custodian’s cottage.
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Excavations and works intended to refresh the understanding and presentation of the abbey began in 1936. These were interrupted by the Second World War and completed only in 1953.
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Day & month n/k. In 1938 the family placed the site in state guardianship.
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Summer/July: Headed by Dr Hugh Wilmott of Sheffield University, the site is excavated by a team of students and volunteers.
