It is only natural that any recorded history of a village such as ours should be found among papers and other docurnents which have been preserved in houses of some size and antiquity. The two oldest houses, of any size, in the Parish are The Priory and Hinton House. F'or a long time the house now known as "The Priory” was incorrectly called The Abbey, This error in naming has been reversed in the case of Hinton House, for a long time it was called 'The Grange” and Leland in his Itinerary of 1539 speaks of seeing “a graung” great and well builded, that longed to Henton Priory of Chartusians”. When the Grange or “Graung” became 'House” is unknown. Any account of Hinton Priory falls naturally into two parts,
a) the Carthusian monastic foundation and b) the history of the present house.
a) The first monks came from the Charterhouse, founded by Wlliam de Longespee, the son of Henry II and Fair Rosamund, at Hetlhrop in Gloucestershire. They had not found the place suitable for the requirements of their order, so his widow, Ela, Countess of Salisbury in her own right, gave them in exchange her manors of Hinton and Norton. Her charter was confirmed by Henry III in 1227 and it is probable that the Charterhouse of Locus Dei, as it was called, was founded in that year. The buildings would take some time to erect, so that if the register of Lacock Abbey is correct, the Countess settled her nuns at Lacock in the morning and rode out to Hinton that same afternoon in May 1232 for the dedication of the monastery, drinking on the way, it is said, at a spring in Friary Wood, which is still called :Ela` s Well. As she was both their benefactress and foundress, this would be one of the few occasions, on which the Carthusians allowed a woman to be present.
Hinton Priory was the second oldest of the nine charterhouses in England. The first, also in Somerset, has been founded at Witham, in Selwood Forest, by Henry II in 1174 as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas a Becket. The main differences between the Carthusian Order (founded by St. Bruno in 1084) and the other Orders were as follows: - Each monk lived in a little cell, or rather cottage –whereas -the monks of other orders led a more communal life, slept in a common dormitory and associated with one another at meals and in fact throughout the whole day. The life of the Carthusian was contemplative, austere and secluded. He was chiefly concerned with the care of his own soul and most of his time, therefore, was spent at services in the church or at private devotions in his cell. 'Teaching, charity and hospitality, which formed such an integral part of the more active life of the other orders, was very restricted in consequence. Under no circumstances were women allowed within the precincts, because the Bible has shown that neither Adam nor David nor Solomon nor any of the wise men of old could resist the blandishments and deceits of the sex:! They did no manual labour in the field, unlike the Cistercians and Benedictines, who were great farmers. The essential work of the community was supplied by the "Conversi", or Lay Brothers, and "Donati"or labourers, who, unlike the former, had taken no vows at all. The monk's chief occupations, apart from his religious duties, were mainly the copying and binding of books, also gardening and carpentry. He was allowed no property of any kind even his clothes were provided for him. He had only two meals a day and was never allowed to eat meat, even in case of sickness. The story goes that, when the Pope, being troubled at the severe discipline of the Carthusians regime9 tried to abolish this restriction, the Carthusians having failed to persuade him by other arguments, sent a deputation of 25 hale and hearty old men, whose ages ranged from 80 to 100 years. This argument proved unanswerable. Strict silence was enjoined upon the monks, and they were never allowed to talk to one another except for a short time on Sundays after the morning meal, or during the weekly walk, which they might take outside the monastery. Sundays and feastdays were the only occasions on which they had their meals together in the refectory; on other days their food was handed to them through a hatch in their cell. The general layout of the monastery consisted of the Outer Court, with the gatehouse, guesthouse, bakery, barns and so on, and the Inner Court, or Great Cloister, surrounded by the monk`s little four-roomed cottages, each in its own little garden. The Church and other monastic buildings separated these two courts from one another, so that the monks were as far as possible removed from contact with the world. Both at Witham and Hinton the lay brothers lived nearly a mile away; in the later monasteries they shared the same site. There are still a few fragments in Friary Wood, near the river, of the lay brothers quarters. Such was the daily life of a Carthusian, but in spite of its unsocial nature they were the noblest of the monks and preserved their rule inviolate to the last. Even the brutal colmnissioners of Henry VIII could find no cause for complaint nor any breath of scandal in any Carthusian House. The scarcity of information about Hinton may partly be accounted for by the complaint of Sir Walter Hungerford in a letter to Cromwell shortly after the dissolution of the monastery that Harry Champneys of Orchardleigh and others had broken into the Prior's cell and stolen all the documents. From other sources, however, we learn that the Prior had full manorial rights, including the punishment of offenders, The monks were allowed to hold a great fair at Norton, and also a weekly market. The exaction of such dues caused constant friction between the monks and the citizens of Bath and Bristol, but the mohks always had a strong protector in Edward III especially after the Black Death, when he allowed them to pay higher wages than those paid by their neighbours, contrary the provisions of the Statute of Labourers. One of the most famous of the monks of' Hinton was Prior John Luscote, who became the first Prior of the London Charter house in the year 1370 and remained there till his death in 1398. Another monk, called Nicholas Hopkyns, was Father Confessor the Duke of Buckingham and is mentioned somewhat harshly in Shakespearets play, King Henry VIII. Unfortunately for the Duke Hopkyns prophesied that he should one day be king, with the result that he was promptly arrested and beheaded. In the year 1529 it is interesting to note that the Augustinian Priory of St. Radegund at Longleat (afterwards the seat of the Marquess of Bath) came into the possession of the monks of Hinton. Ten years later on April 27th, 1539 Prior Edmund Horde signed the surrender of the monastery, after at first refusing to do so. The Priory and its property were valued at £248/19/2, out of which total the Grange Farm accounted for over fifth. The evicted Prior and twenty-three monks and lay brothers received a generous gratuity and yearly pension. So the life of the monastery came to an end after a period of more than 300 years.
b) After the Dissolution
The monastic buildings did not long remain intact. The church, as usual, was stripped of its lead and soon fell into decay. After the execution of Lord Hungerford the property was granted to John Bartlett, who sold it to Matthew Colthurst, whose son, Edmund, lived at Hihton for many years and several of his children were baptised at Hinton Church. He owned the Abbey Church in Bath and presented it to the citizens. In 1578 he sold Hinton to the Hungerfords. The origin of the present house is rather obscure, but it is now generally agreed that a 15th century monastic guesthouse forms a considerable part of it and that this was extended and altered in the reign of Elizabeth. "Mr.C. S. Raiegh-Radfbrd, F.S.A., one of the greatest living authorities on ancient buildings, is of the opinion that this did not take place before the last quarter of the 16th century, in which case the builders must have been the Hungerfords. The Colthursts were probably content to use the Carthusian guesthouse as their home, with a few minor alterations, to make the rooms suitable for the use of a lay household. The building material in any case was supplied f'rom the monastic ruins.
From 1578 the Priory seems to have been occupied by Capt. Antony Hungerford, who died in 1594 and lies buried under the Victorian tiles in Hinton church. It was then leased by Lord Hungerford to his daughter, Mary, who married Thomas Shaa, Esq. , grandson of a former Lord Mayor of London. It was as a wedding present to them that the famous Hungerford table was made, which remained in the house for over 300 years, until it was sold comparatively recently to Mr.R. Hearst, the American millionaire, for the sum of £6,000. Mary Shaa died in 1614 and is buried in the chapel at Farleigh Castle. Her descendants seem to have lived at the Priory till the middle of the 17th century. In 1684 Sir Edward Hungerford, the spendthrift, who gambled away the vast family estates, sold the Hinton property to Henry Bayntun of Spye Park. It was bought at the beginning of the 18th century by Walter Robinson, Esq. , in whose family it remained for about 230 years. His grandson, however, the second Stocker Robinson, who died in 1781, was the last male heir, the property henceforward continually passing to daughters, with a consequent change of surname. One or these, Ellen Humphreys, married Capt. George Symonds of the 18th Light Dragoons and lived at the Priory until her death in 1846. She and for a short time her daughter Louisa Brooke were the last of the family to reside in the house, though the property remained in their possession until Mrs.Gray sold it in 1930. Two years later it was resold to the present owner, Major Philip C. Fletcher, M.C., F. S.A. , who, owing to the second World War, was unable to come into residence until 1945. Of earlier residents by far the most energetic seems to have been Captain Symonds, who died in 1830. Though documentary evidence is lacking, it is evident that he was determined to turn the house from a farm into a gentleman's residence, in the modern style. Accordingly he pulled down the old farmhouse, which was situated at the east end or the house, and rebuilt the farm adding to an old building which dates from the time of Cromwell, further up the hill to the west. He called it Pengethly, after his old home in Herefordshire, but for many years it has been known as the Abbey Farm. He must have been the owner who made many unfortunate alterations to the house, such as the building of a hideous neo-gothic dining room, the mutilation of Tudor archways and plaster ceilings, the removal of the old front door, the blocking up of fire-places and so on. He was also mainly responsible for building the north aisle in the church and for the separation of the two parishes of Hinton and Norton, which has been united since 1527. His laudatory epitaph may be seen in the church and his tomb in the churchyard behind the east window.
In the year 1933 Major Fletcher made a complete restoration of the house. The huge oak beams, which supported the floors, were found to be so rotted at the ends that the whole of the interior of the house would undoubtedly have collapsed in the course of a few years. One of these has been preserved for general interest in the refectory, while the rest were transformed into panelling and doorways. The incongruous dining room was pulled down, the Elizabethan fire places uncovered, the front door replaced in its original position at the foot of the stone monastic staircase and the Tudor features restored as far as possible. In 1950 Major Fletcher re-roofed the chapterhouse, which was in a dangerous condition owing to the decay of the oak beams and battens. In addition he, with the help of his sons, has carried out an extensive excavation of the monastic ruins; apparently for the first time, and has succeeded in establishing not only the dimensions of the church, but also the general layout of the Great Cloister, with the monks' cells and gardens.