Geoffrey Haget or Simon Ward. Eventually the Ward family became patrons. It may be an offshoot of Sinningthwaite.
The last prioress was Elizabeth Pudsey, who has a tombstone monument in a wall of a laundry house in the rear of the more recent main dwelling.
When it was dissolved after 1537, there were 11 nuns.
Possibly a dependency Sinningthwaite. More probably it was only founded by that house. What about the other 2 founders mentioned then?
Margaret Clifford, a widow, gave them the church of Belton inside the Isle of Axholme, which was confirmed in 1379 by Richard II.
All assets totalled 13 pounds, 5 shillings and 4 pence at dissolution (1535).
Church of Belton on Isle of Axholme
In 1445 the buildings were in ruin. The nunnery became the foundation for an eighteenth-century house constructed for Sir Walter Calverly in 1706-1709 which remains standing. In the basement are small Gothic windows, a fireplace with an 8 foot long stone mantle, and two drains which date from the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. A physical description of the house was made by the Suppression Commission (London: P.R.O., SP 5/2/25-47) for 1539. Two stone columns sit in a field north of the site and a tombstone monument to the last prioress, Elizabeth Pudsey, exists in the wall of a laundry house in the rear of the main dwellig. A reconstruction of the convent's physical plan was drawn from the dissolution report (Esholt Priory, 4) and an amateur watercolor depicting the convent as it might have appeared in the Middle Ages currently hangs in the eighteenth-century home (Medieval English Cistercian Nunneries: Their Art and Physical Remains).
Report by the Suppression Commission (London: P.R.O., SP 5/2/25-47)
Early Yorkshire charters: being a collection of documents anterior to the thirteenth century made from the public records, monastic chartularies, Roger Dodsworth's manuscripts and other available sources i, 168, no. 200; vi, 156-7, no. 67.
A Transcript of the Court Rolls of Yeadon, 1361-1476: With the Early Rentals and Accounts of Esholt Priory, Charters, Deeds, and Associated Materials to 1500 A.D. Dissolution Rentals and Accounts.
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, 223.
The Cistercian Priory of S. Leonard at Esholt in Airedale
Esholt Priory
Esholt Priory
The Victoria History of the County of York3:161-63 available online at ">http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36245&strquery=Esholt"> [Victoria County History]
termination date (needs verification) (Knowles)
[V0339]
