The historical facts are modest. Barbara Mason was abbess of Marham Abbey from 1511 to 1535, and a report of 1536 states that she and four of her nuns had confessed to grave incontinency. The details come from the Victoria County History of Norfolk (1906).
The local legend is far more lurid. Commonly known as Sister Barbara, she is supposed to have hired men to rob travelling merchants on Vinegar Hill, to the south of the village, with a portion of the proceeds fed back to her. For these sins she was said to have been bricked up alive in the abbey. She was also rumoured to have carried on a secret liaison with the landlord of the Old Bell pub nearby, using a secret tunnel.
The inn has been demolished, but it is said her ghost haunted its site and the area around Vinegar Hill. An effort was reportedly made in 1935 to find the tunnel near the abbey ruins, without success. The village website retells the legend of Sister Barbara.
Since the 1536 report records a confession, there is a real scandal behind the story, but the highway robbery, the bricking up and the ghost are all legend, and I have tagged the entry contested.
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