The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St John, Evangelist and Apostle (medieval)
Cluniac house, former
A major monastic site in the Romanesque period, but now not a stone is to be seen. Remains are in hands of museums and in ‘a garden adjoining the site’ (Lockett, 1971, 57, 58). Much stone is said to have been taken in the 16thc. to build the nearby ‘New Hall’, N of the Ferrybridge Road, but this has itself been demolished, see Bellamy (1965, xiii) and Pevsner (1967, 396, 644).
The site is now a large grassed area to the E of the castle. One level area through the middle of the site once included the cloister; a hummocky area to the N was the site of the church. The medieval builders probably terraced the site. In recent years the grass has been mown in order to pick out the areas covered by the church and main buildings. The site was over 8 acres (3.2 hectares) and is approximately bounded by Mill Dam Lane, Ferrybridge Road, Box Lane and Bondgate. The church was over 230 feet (70m) long.
Records for the Priory in the Heritage Environment Records for West Yorkshire (www.heritagegateway.org.uk) give further details on the Priory (monument no. 2088), and New Hall (monument no. 7743).
For the excavations c.1957-1961, see Bellamy (1965), which illustrates some chevron voussoirs with schematic drawings (fig. 23). Sculpture from the excavations was eventually taken to Pontefract Museum in Salter Row and its store (see separate reports).