Cook Hill was founded by an unknown person around 1180. Its most celebrated patron was Isabel de Mauduit, countess of Warwick, who was improperly styled the foundress.
J. Hilwene, Hewene, later Prioresss at Pinley, Warwickshire Pinley in 1365.
There were 8 nuns in 1381. Seven nuns were granted pensions after suppression.
The community had a visitation in 1290 according to Victoria County Histories Warwickshire 2:60.
Its most celebrated patron was Isabel de Mauduit, countess of Warwick, who was improperly styled the foundress.
In 1535 its annual income was valued at 35 pounds, 9 shillings, 3 pence.
See present state of medieval structure below.
A small chancel remains of the nunnery's church, which became a private chapel of Nicholas and Catherine Fonteseue after the dissolution. The chancel measures 42 feet long, 23 feet, 6 inches wide and 17 feet high and still contains the original walls on the east and north sides. Sections of the nunnery's stone can still be seen. A recessed Gothic niche, like a piscina, exists on the exterior north wall. The interior has a "very large blocked surround of the east window and the north wall contains the east jamb of a north arcade, probably towards a chapel. The details . . . are fourteenth and early fifteenth century" (Pevsner, Buildings: Worcestershire, 123, quoted in Nichols, 169-170). On the south of the modern house is a stone wall with some of the convent's wave molding in it. The site has been photographed from the air on three separate occasions (Cambridge Univ.: Dept. of Aerial Photo, NT 94-97, April 26, 1954; BEX 9-1, March 26, 1971; and BYS 72, July 1, 1976) which produced 8 different angles of the house.
Pipe Rolls 2-4 of Henry II, 62.
Medieval English Cistercian Nunneries: Their Art and Physical Remains; Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries After the Norman Conquest; Medieval Religious Houses in England and Wales, 222.; Cookhill Nunnery, Inkberrow Annotation: Notes on Surviving Earthworks; Dugdale's Monasticon Volume 5; Nunnery of Cokehill, in Worcestershire
The Victoria History of the County of Worcester2:156-58 available online at ">http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36476&strquery=Cookhi... [Victoria County History]
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According to a fifteenth-century account of Cook Hill, the nuns were originally at Spernall and of the Benedictine order before they changed site and settled at Cook Hill some 2 miles away. The community was probably of Benedictine origin. The earliest evidence of the house being Cistercian is an entry in the statutes of the order of 1491, confirming the election and installation of a prioress. The nunnery's adoption of Cistercian customs may have been relatively late in its history (Thompson, 102).
