Carrow Abbey

Carrow Abbey is a former Benedictine priory in Bracondale, southeast Norwich, England. The village on the site used to be called Carrow and gives its name to Carrow Road, the football ground of Norwich F.C., located just metres to the north. Granted by charter of King Stephen, the abbey was founded ca. 1146, and became a Grade I listed building in 1954.

The actual date of the house's foundation is not clear. King Stephen, by charter, gave his lands in the fields of Norwich, and a meadow adjoining the land charged to God and the Church of St. Mary and St. John, of Norwich, and the nuns serving there. Stephen directed that such nuns should found their church on such land. They were to hold such lands as freely as the king himself did. Upon this, two of the nuns, who were sisters, Seyna and Lescelina, are said to have begun building the priory in 1146, eight years before Stephen's death, and to have dedicated it to "St. Mary of Carhowe", from which it would seem this was an offshoot of a Norwich nunnery dedicated to St. Mary and St. John . The Benedictine nunnery, usually called Carrow Abbey, though only a priory, was founded for a prioress and nine "black nuns", but afterwards twelve nuns were part of its foundation.

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