In 13th century Italy there arose a Christian mendicant movement which moved the hermetic and monastic lifestyle directly into engagement with the flourishing renaissance towns and cities. To minister more effectively to the spiritual needs of this growing population shift. It happened in a haphazard and something of a spontaneous way, their was no founding individual who led by example to pre-define its ethos and mission, And so in 1243 a group of Tuscan hermits petitioned Pope Innocent IV to unite them under one coherent organisation. To do so he issued a Papal Bull which instructed they all should adopt the Rule & Way of the Blessed Augustine. This Rule was the simplest and hence the easiest to adhere to amongst the challenging circumstances of lay people and monks closely interacting. The Augustinian Canons founded in the 11th century, consequentially became the umbrella organisation that these semi-monastic institutions became absorbed into. Ministering to the outside world being a central part of their religious duties.
The progressive development of Creake Abbey does to a degree mirror these wider developments in religious context. A small chapel St Mary of the Marshes was built by the De Nerford family in 1206. The site by the small River Burn was later turned by them into a Hospital dedicated to St Bartholemew in 1217. This was elevated by Henry III to a Priory in 1225 and to an Abbey in 1231 From relatively early on these institutions were run under the auspices of the Augustinian Canons. Patronage from local wealthy families such as the De Nerford's and from Henry III allowed them to rapidly expand the abbey's buildings and hence the services it could offer to the local populace. Becoming a vibrant place for a local market distributing fruit, bread, ale, meat and fish to the surrounding area.
By its height in the 14th Century there was still only six full time canons, but these were augmented by many junior canons, novices and lay brethren who essentially formed the practical and administrative wing of the abbey. Unlike many other monastic sites in Norfolk, Creake Abbey continued with its original function as a hospital right up til 1397. Nearly a century later in 1484 there was a catastrophic fire in the Abbey itself. This appears to have completely destroyed the Abbey's nave and left its chancel and side chapels with blocked up windows and arches, in urgent need of repair. The abbot wrote to the king, Richard III asking for financial help in restoring the Abbey. Funds were provided by 1491 and repairs were said to be well advanced and the north side of the quire already completed twelve years later. The nave was completely abandoned as a inviable structure, so the restorations, such as they were, were focused on making the main chancel and side chapels usable spaces again. You can see that some arches have been infilled and windows inserted.
Then in 1506 further tragedy struck. There was an outbreak of the mysterious medieval 'sweating sickness' in the Abbey and this completely wiped out the remaining monastic community. No further push to restore the Abbey appears to have been attempted. And by the following year the abbey site and estates were handed over, as they were, to the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, and through her eventually became owned by Christ's College, Cambridge.
Its hard to imagine that all this was going on the periphery, of what is even now a small quiet Norfolk village. But one has to remember that barely a few miles down the road are the Burnham villages. All very closely knit with each other, with a Carmelite Friary in Burnham Norton. This corner of West Norfolk in medieval times was filled with devout religious activity, funded by the many considerably wealthy landowners of the area. Who assured there place in heaven via pious acts of patronage of religious institutions.
Creake Abbey is then quite an unusual monastic ruin, in that it was in ruins and dissolved decades before the Dissolution of the Monasteries began in 1536. Undoubtedly subsequently robbed of some of its dressed stone. It was adapted, as these ruins often were, into becoming barns for storing hay, farm produce, machinery and livestock. Other outbuildings being incorporated into an enlarged manor farm close by. What you see today, is what was left of the abbey church post those two ruinous historical events. With the nave already gone, and the chancel barely half repaired and all the local villages already having their own parish churches well established. There was no local desire to adapt the remaining buildings into a church, as at Binham or Weybourne Priory. It also maybe that locals thought the sacredness of this site was just too tainted by the double disasters that had befallen it. These were both in there own way seen as a sign of God's judgement upon it as an institution.
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