CHAPTER XIV 



MINSMERE LEVEL 



T3ETWEEN the cluster of dilapidated cottages 

 -D known as the Sluice, on the Suffolk coast, and 

 the inland hamlet of East Bridge there lie some two 

 miles of reclaimed marshland known as Minsmere 

 Level. 



A straight canal, called the " new cut," bounded on 

 either side by a sea-wall, runs right through the centre 

 of it, from the bridge which gives to the hamlet its 

 name to the sluice or aqueduct on the shore. Three 

 drainage windmills with picturesque brown tops and 

 sails are conspicuous objects in the landscape, and the 

 striking ruins of an old monastic chapel. For in 

 mediaeval days an abbey stood on the tongue of land 

 slightly raised above the level of the swamp. It was 

 founded in the middle of the twelfth century by one 

 Ranulph de Glanvile for a small community of Prae- 

 monstratensian monks. The situation, owing to the 

 noxious exhalations of the marsh, doubtless proved very 

 unhealthy, and some two hundred years later a larger 

 abbey was erected about a mile and a half distant on 

 higher ground. It is probable, however, that until the 

 Reformation a few monks continued to occupy the 

 Minsmere Monastery, and we read of one John Green, 

 abbot of the new establishment at Leiston, resigning 

 his position in order to become a hermit " at the chapel 



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