Monk Bretton Priory was founded in 1154 as a Cluniac house before later becoming independent Benedictine, and it stands in ruins today within what is now the Lundwood area of Barnsley. Its own watermill, built originally by the monks and used continuously for centuries after the priory's eventual dissolution, survives nearby, now trading commercially on the priory's own historic name.
The recurring figure reported here is a fleeting, black-robed monk, glimpsed gliding steadily through the priory grounds and across the road toward the mill before finally vanishing at its doorway. The sighting has been reported often enough, and with a consistently repeated route each time, that it genuinely counts as one of the more established ghost traditions found anywhere in Barnsley, distinct from a single, one-off report of the kind that makes up so much of this wider collection.
Separately, a figure in black robes has also been reported inside the pub now occupying the old mill building itself, gliding silently through what is now the restaurant area, and men in long robes resembling monks have been described running through the wider grounds on other occasions. Taken together, the overall picture is of a genuinely old monastic site whose former inhabitants are locally believed never to have fully left it, their black robes still glimpsed moving between the ruined priory and the mill that grew up from their own original labour.
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