INFORMATION

Mount Grace Priory is free to National Trust members except on event days. The priory is open until March 24 on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 4pm.

The priory is located off the A19 close to Osmotherley. It takes one hour 20 minutes by car via the A1 and A19.

For more information visit english-heritage.org.uk or call 01609 883494.

The more monasteries I visit, the more I think “those monks had it good.”

I know it was a harsh life, living in a cell, withdrawing from the world, wearing sackcloth and copying religious manuscripts.

But the settings of these once thriving communities are, by and large, beautiful. A life within such a tranquil place, away from the cut and thrust of everyday life, can’t have been so bad.

One of the lesser-known monasteries, Mount Grace Priory is the best-preserved of the ten Carthusian monasteries in England.

It’s location, beneath forested hills in the North York Moors National Park, feels far from anywhere, yet is just a stone’s throw from the busy A19 South Yorkshire to Sunderland road.

In fact, Mount Grace - which is well known for its snowdrops - lay on the medieval road from York to Durham, the modern entry track having origins in the medieval track that led off the main road to the priory gatehouse.

The priory was closed in 1539 under the Dissolution of the Monasteries and most of it buildings dismantled, but later, in the 17th century, the north guest house was converted into a comfortable residence.

At the end of the 19th century the industrialist Sir Lowthian Bell extended the house in the Arts and Crafts style and began repair of the priory ruins.

The entrance to the monastery, which is owned by the National trust and operated by English Heritage, today takes you through this Virginia-creeper-clad sandstone house where two newly restored Arts and Crafts rooms in the house are open to the public and there is also an exhibition.

Walking into the shell of the monastery, it is evident how vast it was. Even my teenage daughter - who I usually have trouble prising out of the car - was impressed and proceeded to walk around its perimeter walls.

Remarkably, some of the medieval buildings - which housed 26 monks - survive to roof height. Those that are visible only as foundations were taken down in the late 16th and 17th centuries. I was shocked to learn that the church itself was not intentionally destroyed but left to fall into ruin.

It was interesting to find out how the monks lived in a reconstructed monk’s cell. Rebuilt by Sir Lowthian Bell between 1901 and 1905, it was refitted by English Heritage in the late 1980’s, its garden and galleries based on archaeological evidence and plants available in the 16th century. Its furnishings are based on contemporary Carthusian illustrations or surviving examples.

Spartan and rustic, the cell was not altogether uncomfortable - it reminded me of an interior from Country Living magazine.

There are lots of little cubby holes in the walls, which acted as serving hatches to the cells, enabling the monks to receive food without coming I to contact with anyone. I remember as a child visiting the monastery with my family and watching my brother squeeze into one of these small hatches.

Impressive stone fireplaces can be seen as well as the remains of a kiln.

A colony of stoats lives in passages under the priory, but sadly we did not glimpse any.

We combined the visit with a browse around the market town of Northallerton nearby, which has a variety of independent and high street stores on its wide high street.

Market days are Wednesdays and Saturdays when both sides of the high street are home to stalls selling a wide range of goods and produce.