The site of Irford or Orford Priory, a house of Premonstratensian nuns founded in the mid 12th century and dissolved 1539. {1} The nunnery was probably built some time during the reign of Henry II. The site of the main priory buildings is apparent at TF19529458 where there is a concentration of grassy platforms and low banks, some with stone content. Closely associated with these are a number of drainage ditches, and to the south is a fishpond complex. {3} The site is that of a religious house, an off-shoot of Newsham Abbey, whose history is largely unknown. There were a prioress and 7 nuns when the house was dissolved in 1539, and the site was granted to Robert Tyrwhitt. The Tyrwhitts let the estate, as did their successors, and it seems likely that a series of residences occupied the site. This latter occupation has obscured much of the earlier monastic layout. Though the site of the priory itself is confined to the north-west side of the present stream, its associated fishponds extend across it. This situation is the result of complex technical and administrative alterations in medieval times. The parish boundary between Orford and Binbrook follows the line of the stream along the whole of the valley except in the section opposite the priory. Here, the Orford boundary extends south-east of the beck, thus including in Orford parish a small area of land which must have originally been part of Binbrook. Why this transfer took place is unknown, though it may have been connected with the early gift of land to the priory by the De Aubigny family, some of whose land lay in Binbrook parish. The land on the south-east side of the valley is largely covered by lobes of soliflucted material. There are no traces of ploughing or any other activity in this area beyond recent drainage ditches. Traces of ridge-and-furrow, presumably the remains of the common fields of Binbrook, lie above these landslips. The majority of surviving earthworks occupy a roughly rectangular area south-west of the existing farm buildings of the now derelict priory farm. To the south of the farm, two ranges of stone buildings, in part visible only as a rectangular pattern of parch-marks, are probably part of the conventual arrangement of the priory, the rest of which is obscured by reuse of the site by the later house. Since the outlet channel of an 18th or 19th century water-mill slices through earthworks, it seems possible that the precinct of the priory extended north-east to encompass the area of priory farm and the paddock to its south-east. Within the paddock a broad hollow way defines the limit of the precinct, running north-west from the modern stream and separates the priory land to the south-west from the remains of the village of Orford (PRN 50708) to the north-east. The north end of this hollow way is now blocked, but further north and north-east of the farm buildings it reappears as a terrace way. It may once either have run on north, or turned north-west as the existing earthworks indicate, and continued towards Stainton village (see Everson, Taylor and Dunn for detailed description). {2}