Wetheral Priory Gatehouse

Well-preserved 15th-century gatehouse, the sole survivor of a small Benedictine priory. A miniature 'pele-tower' containing two storeys of comfortable rooms, it later became a fortified vicarage, a defence against border raiders.

This fifteenth-century gatehouse, beside a narrow lane to the south of Wetheral village, is almost all that remains of the Benedictine priory of Wetheral, founded in the early twelfth century when Ranulf Meschin, first Norman lord of Cumberland, gave the manor of Wetheral to the abbot of St Mary’s, York. Only a few years earlier, in 1092, William II of England had gained control of the region from the Scots, and had put Meschin, brother of the Earl of Chester, in charge of this strategically important Border area.