Located in the village of Coldingham in the Scottish Borders, the original Benedictine Priory was founded on the site of an earlier monastery by Edgar, King of Scots, in 1098. Like other monastic sites, it profited from land ownership, which brought income from timber management and from the rearing of sheep that produced wool for export. Such activities made one of the wealthiest religious houses in Scotland.

And like other such establishments in a such a turbulent age, it was subjected to damage and destruction on several occasions, even at the hands of its own Prior. It was ultimately destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in 1650, who besieged it in an attempt to evict Royalist sympathisers sheltering inside. Today the ruins are scattered around the Victorian parish church, which was re-built using the surviving walls of the original priory church.