the Little Almonry

Almonry, The Little, is the continuation of the preceding [the Great Almonry], crossing Dean-street, and leading to Dean's-yard by the Abbey. On the site of the Almonry, vulgarly called the Ambry, stood originally a chapel dedicated to St. Catherine, or, as Stowe says, to St. Anne. Near this place Abbot Islip, whose chapel is among the greatest beauties in the adjoining Abbey, erected, in 1474, the first printing-office that was ever established in England, when the celebrated William Caxton, a citizen and mercer of London, brought that invaluable art from Holland, and became the earliest printer in England.