" Daniel Defoe (1659-1731), author of the book Robinson Crusoe, visited Clare on his travels and says of it 'a poor town and dirty, the streets being unpaved. But it has a good church'.

His last sentence was correct. Clare’s church can claim to have a place among the large and beautiful churches for which East Anglia is renowned. I leave open the question whether the street cleaners of the day were up to standard, but its buildings as seen today certainly cannot require the word ‘poor’. Many of them are described in Books I and II (Clare A-Z and The old streets of Clare and their buildings). Among old buildings described there are some which have been related to the church - the nearby old priest's house known now as The Ancient House; its one time successor as a vicarage across the road, Sigors, now also superseded as a vicarage; and the Guildhall from which guilds processed into the church through the same west door which is still used on special occasions today.

I have tried to write for ordinary people so have inserted explanations which may be unnecessary for those who are keen explorers of churches but may prove helpful to the ordinary reader - including, perhaps, young people still at school. With this in mind I have also woven in fuller explanations of some features which are common to most churches, so in some sense the book widens out from being an account simply of Clare parish church into an introduction to churches in general.

On limited occasions when mentioning architectural features I have included technical phrases of the kind which would describe Clare church by saying 'it consists of a clerestoried chancel of three bays flanked by chapels of two bays, with north and south porches, and a chapel east of the latter, and a squat western tower', feeling it may prove to be an advantage to keep such official descriptions on record. More simple descriptions appear in the guides on sale in the church.

Founded in 1248, Clare Priory is one of the oldest religious houses in England, occupied by the order that founded it. The Augustinians came to Clare from northern France at the invitation of the Earl of Clare, Gloucester and Hertford, Sir Richard de Clare, to build their first foundation in the British Isles.

The size of the community was never more than about thirty friars and was suppressed by Henry VIII's agents in 1538. No one knows what happened to the friars, though another Augustinian friar, John Stone, was executed in Canterbury in 1539 for refusing to sign the Oath of Supremacy and is now numbered among the forty Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales.

After the suppression of the Priory, ownership of the buildings, goods, lands and revenues became the property of the Crown, and so passed into private ownership. The Augustinians returned to Clare in 1953 thanks to the generosity of the May family, who allowed the Order to purchase the house for only a fraction of its true value.