ABSTRACT
In addition to its cathedral priory, Carmelite and Franciscan houses, and secular ecclesiastical institutions, late medieval Coventry boasted a Carthusian monastery, located to the south of the city just outside the walls. Initiated between 1381 and 1385, and dedicated to St Anne, the priory was a standard Carthusian foundation for a prior and twelve monks, plus lay brethren. This survey of the Charterhouse is straightforward in method and aims. After brief exposition of some historical matters, the site and principal buildings of St Anne’s are discussed, then aspects of its institutional life illuminated by surviving evidence for art and texts. This provides a supplement, and in some cases a corrective, to previous studies of the Charterhouse. The overarching aim is to impart a sense of the form, vitality and integrity of St Anne’s, and to demonstrate that it had a significant place in the material and institutional topography of Coventry in the century and a half leading up to the Reformation.
