Historic Description of Shrewsbury Abbey

Shrewsbury Abbey

The Benedictine Abbey here, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, is a post-Conquest foundation. It was in 1083 that Roger de Montgomery erected an already existing church into an abbey, and had two monks brought from Seez in Normandy, where he had possessions, to direct the arrangement of the buildings. Fulchered, the first Abbot, also came from Seez. The founder himself took the vows in his abbey in 1094, three days before his death. The annual value as returned just before the Suppression was £615. Henry Viii at one time intended to make Shrewsbury the seat of a bishop, and to endow the See out of the revenues of the Abbey, the church of which would have been the cathedral. But the Act drafted to this effect was never passed. It would have been the means of preserving some other great churches, such as Bury St Edmunds. What eventually happened here was that the nave of the church was given to the parishioners of Holy Cross, and the rest of the buildings granted to one William Langley.

Such outside celebrity as attached to this Abbey was chiefly due to the presence of thee relics of St Winifred, which were translated thither in 1138 from Gwytherin. A piece of screen work connected with her shrine remains in the north aisle. There was another piece with figures of St John Baptist, Winifred, and Beuno, which for many years was in a garden in the town, which could not be traced in 1926.

Of an original Norman cruciform church, we now have the western portion an aisled nave 123 feet long, with western tower and north porch. Transepts, chancel, and nave roof are modern.

Of the six bays of the nave, the two western were remodelled in the fourteenth-century; the eastern are Norman. The broad piers half-way down probably mark the division between the monks’ and the townspeople’s portions. The rood screen will have stood here, and the pulpitum one bay further east. The west door and much of the west wall is also of Norman date. The tower, which is a fourteenth-century addition, has a very large Perpendicular west window. Over it is a mutilated image of a king, said to be Edward III. The church is full of monuments, many of which have been brought from churches in the town (St Chad and St Alkmund’s) and some from Wellington. One, ascribed in a modern brass inscription to the founder, is far later that his time. Others, of a judge (north aisle) and of an ecclesiastic, T. More (south aisle), are worthy of examination, as are the altar-tombs at the west end of the north aisle.

The modern additions to the church, by Pearson, are of considerable dignity and importance.

The monastic buildings were on the south side, now traversed by a street. The foundations of some have been traced, e.g. the west wall of the chapter house and its apsidal end. The west range was the cellarer’s. The plate in the Monasticon shows some medieval structures still attached to the church at the west end. Two quadrangles are recorded to have existed, the larger being that of the cloister buildings, the smaller containing the abbot’s lodging and other offices. “This, with what may have been the guest hall, was removed in 1865, for railway purposes.” Much had already gone in 1840. A portion which was called part of the infirmary remains in a mutilated state south-west of the church. It was probably the granary and part of the guest buildings.

The only other relic (besides the cloister doors into the nave) is the frater pulpit, that very pretty structure which stands by itself among the railway sheds on the other side of the street. It shows in front a three-sided oriel, approached by steps from behind. On the panels below the windows are images of St Peter and St Paul, the Annunciation, St Winifred, and St Beuno (?). Within, the centre boss of the vaulting has the Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St John.

There is an extraordinary collection of old stained glass, English and foreign, in the splendid church of St Mary’s. The bulk of it is due to a former vicar W. G. Rowland (1827-51). Some of the finest fifteenth-century German glass that can be seen in this country is to be found there. The principal series, scattered over several windows, concerns the life of St Bernard; it came from Altenburg Abbey.

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