Wenlock Priory. The photo is from the cloister garden with the ruins of part of the abbey church, more precisely the south side of the nave standing to the left of the image and the remains of the south transept in the middle. The the right of that are the remains of the remarkable chapter house and to the right are the former prior’s lodgings.
Wenlock Priory is a very attractive set of ruins south of Shrewsbury, north of Ludlow and west of Birmingham, about an hour’s drive from our home in Eardisland. It has been the site of a monastery for almost 900 years.
An Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded here around year 680 with housing for both monks and nuns. The second abbess was Milburga, the daughter of the King of Magonsaete and she was later canonised. After the Norman conquest, the abbey was “refounded” between 1080 and 1082 by the initiative of the Earl of Shrewsbury. It became a sub-abbey of the Cluniac abbey in central France, probably because of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s French contacts and they sent monks from France to Wenlock. At that time, it was no longer a mixed abbey but only for monks.
The monks built a new and much larger church church and new library, chapter house, dormitories, house for the prior and infirmary. The abbey church was more than 100 metres long.
The monastery was dissolved in January 1540 and soon fell into ruins. The ruins are still standing in a very attractively maintained garden that is a magnet for an amateur photographer like me. I have provided some further comments in connection with the pictures.
We re looking straight into the nave of the Norman abbey church. The foundations for the columns that carried the roof of the church nave can be seen either side along the nave. The tall ruins in the middle of the image are the south transept and to the right side is the north transept. The church was at its heydays more than 100 metres long
The southwest part of the nave is relatively well preserved and before that you can see the foundations for the round columns carrying the roof of the nave. Similar circular columns can still be found standing in Shrewsbury Abbey, founded in 1083, roughly when the building of Wenlock Abbey church would have commenced.However, the priory church was probably not completed until between 1180 and 1260.
Inside the southwest part of the nave which unusually had an upper floor, explaining the low ceiling here. The door to the left leads out to the cloister garden.
This is the door to the cloister garden that could be seen in the image above
The lavabo with a stone panel depicting Christ’s call to Peter and Andrew at the sea of Galilee
The “Two Apostles” stone panel preserved on the lavabo (possibly James and John)
From inside the former chapter house looking towards the cloisters and the southwest end of the church nave
Lintel in the chapter house above the doorway to the Prior’s lodgings, probably originally situated at another position. It is Romanesque and depicts a semi-human mask with pointed ears set in between two serpents with heads at both ends. The creatures that can move both ways (with two heads each at opposite directions) could be a reference to the destiny of the soul after death – moving towards heaven or hell.
The south transept to the left, the north to the right
The ruins from the nave in the foreground and the south transept in the background. The flowers can actually be seen also in the previous image, if you look carefully
