Abstract

The wetland regions of Norfolk were once home to many post-Conquest monastic settlements. Established in 1181 on the western bank of the Great Ouse River, to the south of the port city of Lynn, Crabhouse Priory was one such community of women religious. Over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the nunnery compiled records of land transactions, building projects, and details about their authority over the marshland landscape, now bound as a cartulary referred to as the Register of Crabhouse (Add. MS 4733). Using the manuscript as the primary source on the lives of the nuns at Crabhouse, this thesis explores the points of contact between women religious and their natural and built environments. The major climatic shifts of the high Middle Ages and consequential meteorological hazards—wetter summers, longer winters, storminess, and floods—prompted the nuns of Crabhouse Priory to adapt to their changing environments. This thesis takes an ecofeminist approach to the study of Crabhouse’s environmental history, acknowledging the varied and often limited ways women religious could interact with their local land- and waterscapes. Agnes de Methelwold and Joan Wiggenhall, the only prioresses whose works were documented in the Register, provide case studies for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, respectively. Their involvement in drainage projects, in the expansion of arable and pasture, and in the development of infrastructure at the nunnery speak to an active community participating in the transformation of Norfolk’s marshland. The manuscript, in its fragmented form, is used to re-construct and re-imagine the presence of women religious in their medieval landscapes.