Priory Park

Priory Park is located in Victoria Avenue, Southend and is set in 45 acres of parkland.

The park caters for a variety of leisure activities - football, cricket, bowling,
tennis, basketball, fishing, childrens' playground, café, museums and gardens
and ponds, some of which are included on this website.

The Park Gates and Pump

The ornate gates to the Park commemorate the opening of Priory Park by

HRH The Duke of York on 14 July 1920.

150 years before the Park and Victoria Avenue, a small bridge crossed Prittle Brook. The road, then called North Street, was little more than a muddy country lane to Rochford. The remains of the village pump can be seen on the south side of the Brook.

A weatherboarded cottage was on the north side, beyond which were the enclosed grounds of the Priory, at that time a private house. A handful of cottages were on the right hand side - some of which still remain. On the other side of the lane was Earls Hall, a medieval manor house and farm.

To the south, the lane went up the hillside to the Parish church at the top. Scattered buildings along the lower part of the lane, including the village school, became more densely packed as the lane reached the Church which, of course, was the heart of the village.

Prittlewell Priory

Prittlewell Priory was founded by Robert FitzSuen in 1110 AD.

FitzSuen owned vast estates in south east Essex. His grandfather had been one of several French families given lands by Edward the Confessor. However, FitzSuen seems to have given part of his estates in Prittlewell to the monks of St. Pancras, Lewes in Sussex for the foundation of a Priory of the order of Cluny. St. Pancras was the ‘mother’ house of Cluny in England. Cluny was in Burgundy in France,
and had become a favoured monastic foundation because on its very strict regime. There were three Cluniac houses in Essex, Prittlewell being by far the largest. Other Cluniac Priories in south east England include Castle Acre and Bromholm, both in Norfolk.

The rest of the Prittlewell estates seem to have been retained by the family, and were inherited eventually by the Earls of Oxford (the de Veres). This area then became known as Earls Hall.

The Priory was supported by the income from lands, property and churches in many of the surrounding parishes. This included some properties in the town of Prittlewell itself, especially along the north side of East Street, together with properties stretching down to the shore of the Thames, adjacent to the manor of Southchurch. In the 15th century this area was known as South End – the south end of the lands of the Priory.

Prittlewell Priory was largely self-sufficient. The Priory comprised the conventional buildings for religious purposes (the church, the refectory, Priory storerooms or cellars and Prior’s chamber, and the Chapter House with dormitory above. All of these were arranged around the Cloisters.

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