In 686, a monastic cell was consecrated by St. Cuthbert at the request of
St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby and in 1119 Robert Bruce, 1st Lord of Cleveland and
Annandale, granted and confirmed the church of St. Hilda of Middleburg to
Whitby. Up until its closure on the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry
VIII in 1537, the church was maintained by 12 Benedictine monks, many of
whom became vicars, or rectors, of various places in Cleveland. The importance
of the early church at "Middleburg", later known as Middlesbrough
Priory, is indicated by the fact that, in 1452, it possessed four altars.
After the Angles,
