Thetford Priory

Thetford Priory is a cluniac monastic house in Thetford, Norfolk, England. A standout amongst the most critical East Anglian cloisters, it was established in 1103 by Roger Bigod, first Earl of Norfolk, and committed to Our Lady. In the 13^th century, the Virgin Mary is said to have showed up in a dream to local people asking for the expansion to the site of a Lady Chapel.

Amid its development, the old statue of her on the site was found to have an empty in its mind hiding holy people's relics, and turned into a magnet for travelers. It housed the tombs of the Howard line, of Henry Fitz Roy, first Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and of other early Tudor Dynasty authorities. Indeed, even this couldn't spare the convent from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and, on its conclusion in 1540 the Howard tombs were evacuated to St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.