The End of Monasteries

The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII ended almost a millennium of monastic life in England, resulting in a dislocation of people and a disruption of life not seen since the Norman Conquest. Yet newly published research shows that the buildings were not immediately demolished, as was previously imagined.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor James G. Clark whose decades of research into national and regional archives - as well as archaeological remains - has revealed the little-known lives of the last men and women who lived in England's monasteries before the Reformation. 

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