Butley Priory Gatehouse is just visible from the road and this was taken from the trees by the roadside.  It is available for various public uses so a revisit for better pictures is on the agenda.

There are bricks here from 1320.  In her book Brick Building in England, Jane Wight quotes from J N L Myers, Butley Priory in Suffolk, in  Archealogical Journal, XC, 1934, as follows:

“Beside ancient Staverton Forest and sea (near Orford).  Augustiniann Priory founded 1171 by Ranulf Glanville, who also founded Leiston.  He bacame Henry 2s treasurer and Justiciar of England.  Priory came to own over 50  manors... Voluntary surrender 1539, and following year granted to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

Samuel and Nathaniel Buck engraving of 1738 shows gatehouse - the only remains - as completely ruinous.  A house was built around this later.  Entrance passage  and pedestrian entry turned into a room of 33 x 24 ft.  Gatehouse is flint, with stone dressings including flushwork.  Front decorated with most fabulous collection of heraldic shields (stone).  Erected about 1320 by William de Geyton (tomb now in Hollesly church), prior 1131 - 32.  Entrance passages stone-vaulted but tall rectangular chambers on sides - one originally porter’s room - have peaked vaulting cells of brick.  Vaults quadripartite, with chamfered stone ribs.  Cells rise in dome shapes, the (unmoulded) bricks being laid in oval courses.  plastered.”

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