St Monica's Priory, Spetisbury
St Monica's Priory, Spetisbury or Spettisbury, was a religious house in Spetisbury or Spettisbury, Dorset, England. Between 1800 and 1926 it passed through the hands of several different orders and was demolished in 1927.[1]
History
Spettisbury House was an 18th-century country house. In 1800 it was acquired by an exiled community of Augustinian nuns from Louvain, canonesses regular of the Windesheim Congregation. They ran a school here until 1861, when they established St. Augustine's Priory at Abbotsley House in Abbotskerswell, Devon, and sold the premises to a community of Bridgettines from Lisbon.[1] They moved on in 1887, and the buildings were taken over by the Canons Regular of the Lateran based at Bodmin, who sold it in 1907 to a refugee community of Ursulines from Mortain in Normandy exiled by the French anti-religious laws.[1]
The Ursulines moved away in 1926, selling the house to a contractor who demolished it for the materials in the following year.[1]
The burial ground however was excluded from the sale and still survives as a garden.[1]