The Williams Family: Castle Acre Priory and Castle

We visited Castle Acre Priory and Castle earlier in February when we visited Castle Rising Castle.

A priory is a monastery where monks lived and worshiped. In this one, there were about 24 of them I believe. Something I think is neat, is that it seems the churches of priories were built in the shape of a cross. The priory has been around since somewhere around 1100!

We greatly enjoyed this visit and I think discovered that exploring old ruins seems to be a great fit for our family. The kids are able to freely run, roam, and explore. They can be loud and enjoy their natural kid tendencies without Jon and I stressing over them possibly being too rowdy for other guests and old historical pieces on display.

This is the gate house approaching the priory.

Is that not seriously awesome and impressive?! People built this over 900 years ago without today's technology and yet it has so much more design than much of today's architecture. I love it.

I wish I could see what it looked like in it's early and complete days.

Macie was most interested in the audio device we had for telling us about the different parts and uses of the priory.

These stairs weren't as safe as I imagine they were hundreds of years ago.

The kids loved racing across this open grassy area, which I believe was also an open grassy area for the monks.

Koen is standing where there use to be a sewage canal. Each monk had a personal toilet right above the flowing water underneath.

Most of the priory is definitely no more than ruins now, but this bit/part was still enclosed and with a roof. The upper level with the glass windows was the prior's great chamber. The prior was the man in charge here. The windows were once filled with stain glass, some showing the initials of one the prior's here.

Inside the prior's great chamber.

He had a personal toilet and washbasin in his chamber... though the monks had their own toilets, they were all in the same area, separate from their shared chambers.

One prior had these roses painted on the ceiling and it's neat to be able to still see them. These roses were a symbol of King Henry VIII, who eventually closed down the priory and was the king who separated from the Catholic church and started the Church of England.

The priory has had their own personal chapel.

Under the prior's chambers. I do love those ceilings!

Time to clean the mud off our boots!

Some trees just call out to be climbed and this one had a neat limb for it, which each kid took a turn on.

Can you tell I was having a hard time balancing two girls off the ground at once?

Castle Acre Castle

This was our last stop of the day and probably the least impressive. There were much less ruins to see here than our previous stops in the day. Though I failed to photograph it, Hadley's highlight of this stop had nothing to do with the historical portions of it, but having the opportunity to pet a lady's dog. We learned that this dog was a 'nursing dog'; she visits the elderly in assisted living centers to bring them love and smiles. This really appeals to me... it sounds like a lovely way to serve and and bring a smile to those who often need nothing more than a visit. Hadley is growing very fond of dogs and together, we long to have one.

Hadley's expressions and happiness can be contagious.

I appreciate the drawings of how they suspects broken establishments once looked.

This is the wall that surrounded the castle you see in the drawing above.

This grassy area once had a village/market place here. Can you imagine it bustling with people. This day, boys were playing football (soccer) and a family shot little rockets off together. The rectangular mounds in the grass were a lot bigger than we expected once we got up to them. You can see a portion of the stone wall that surrounded the village on the far side of the field.