Rosata of Chicksands
On the 17th of every month, a walled-up nun walks the cloister.
Check opening times
- What's there
- A former priory inside a military base
- Legend from
- Medieval setting
- Best time
- Booked tours, April to October
- Tone
- Chilling
Ghost · Chicksands
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On the 17th of every month, a walled-up nun walks the cloister.
Check opening times
The priory is inside RAF Chicksands, a military base, so you can only visit on a tour booked in advance (1st and 3rd Sunday afternoons, April to October).
Inside the base ahead stands Chicksands Priory, where a nun walled up in the cloister is said to walk on the 17th of every month.
Chicksands Priory was founded around 1150 for a religious community of canons and nuns. Legend says a nun named Rosata fell in love with one of the canons and became pregnant. Her lover was executed, she was made to watch, and she was then walled up alive in the cloisters. Her ghost is said to walk the east cloister on the 17th of every month, still searching for him. The priory later became an officers' club on the RAF and US Air Force base at Chicksands, and airmen stationed there in the 1970s recorded their own night-time vigils. A plaque inside the house carries a verse about her.