The Old Hall at East Bergholt has a history going back to the Domesday Book and has been the residence of Norman Knights, Earls of Oxford, London Bankers, and country squires.  It and the grounds around it were the subject of paintings in the early nineteenth century by the celebrated landscape painter John Constable, R.A., a native of East Bergholt, who made this whole area of Suffolk so famous by his paintings that it is often referred to as "Constable country". 

In 1849 the Old Hall and all its contents were put up for sale by public auction and the house was bought by the Benedictine Nuns whose abbey was established in Brussels in 1598. They had had to leave this at the French Revolution and settled in Winchester, but this house by 1849 was overcrowded.  And so St Mary's Abbey, East Bergholt was established in 1857 as a convent and a school for young ladies.  The chapel was added, as well as a series of extensions to the building over the years.  In the tower a clock was installed which struck not only hours, half hours and quarter hours, but half of quarter hours, i.e. seven and a half minutes.  This regulated the time in the whole village and was still functioning for years after the friars moved in, as many will remember.  It was possible to know the exact time without a watch.  Local Catholics could attend Mass in the lay Chapel which looked sideways on to the High Altar, the nuns in their choir stalls remaining always hidden, although the extern Sisters had regular contact with the public.

In May 1940 a great fear of invasion following on the Dunkirk evacuation gripped the East Coast and the nuns decided to disperse, leaving all their possessions locked in the library and the chapel.  They intended to return after the war, but in the event they never did, except to collect their possessions.  From 1940 the army moved in and used the Abbey buildings as a transit camp for successive contingents of troops going to and coming from active service.   The army vacated the building in October 1945 and once the nuns had decided not to return the bulding was once more for sale.

In 1946 the Province acquired the building as a House of Studies and had to move in quickly to avoid its being requisitioned once more for temporary housing.  The house was in fact in a state of dilapidation and the gardens were a wilderness.  An advance party arrived on 16th September 1946 consisting of Frs Germain Heron, Ronan Scott, and Berard Henrietta with two students, Ignatius Kelly and Peter McVeigh, who lived a very Spartan existence.  So began St Mary's Friary, destined to grow and flourish for twenty-seven years as a House of Studies for the clerical students and for a considerable time as the novitiate for lay brothers.  In autumn 1947 all the existing students arrived from Forest Gate with their Lectors and began academic life and each year more students arrived from the novitiate house at Chilworth so that only five years later in 1952 the community consisted of sixty-seven friars - more than the whole Province today.  The house was made habitable but the signs of the army occupation remained to the end, particularly in those parts of the building never brought into use by the friars, so that when they left in 1973 there were still doors daubed "Q Company Stores" and suchlike.

The years of the existence of St Mary's Friary, East Bergholt, saw many changes.  There was a great change in the relationship of the friars with the local population.  From initial suspicion and misunderstanding, partly in memory of the enclosed Benectine nuns, the friars became not only accepted but a popular and animating force in the locality.  They held Open Days which went on to become the Friary Garden Fete held in the summer each year, when good weather was practically guaranteed, and drew visitors from all over the county.  One of the friars was always appointed Parish Priest of the local parish based in Brantham, another was named chaplain to the Royal Hospital School at Holbrook.  The years also saw the celebration of the Second Vatican Council which affected both the manner and the content of the teaching being imparted.  Ecumenical relations were fostered by conferences and joint services, particularly the carol service held in front of a crib erected on the roadside outside the Friary.