Arundel Priory

Arundel Priory, also known as St. Nicholas is located in Arundel, West Sussex.

The Priory was founded in 1102 by Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, with the monk Gratian, of Sées in Normandy, becoming first prior. Master William de Wedon, set up a school at the priory in 1269, after giving the priory many gifts as well as paying board and lodging.

he priory was dissolved in 1380, to make way for the college of the Holy Trinity including adjoining hospice built 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.

In 1544, Arundel College was surrendered to the Crown, which then sold it back to the Earl of Arundel for 1,000 marks. It has remained in the hands of the Howard family since that time. For a period of nearly three centuries it lay derelict, much of it having been demolished and further damage inflicted on what remained during the course of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century