Open to visitorscheck opening times and admission before you go
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
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Augustinian canons founded Norton in 1134 and it was raised to an abbey in 1391, though the priory name stuck. After the Dissolution a house went up over the ruins, and archaeologists dug the site through the 1970s and 80s — more thoroughly than any other monastic site in Europe, by the museum’s reckoning. You walk round a plan of low walls with one complete survivor at the centre, the vaulted 12th-century undercroft. The museum keeps an outsize medieval St Christopher, and there’s a Georgian walled garden. Paid entry. Halton Castle sits on the hill a mile south-west.
More at the National Heritage List entry
