When was amesbury abbey built

In a theory was advanced that Amesbury parish church was the priory church, but this is now considered unlikely. No traces survive but parts of the prioress's lodgings were retained to form a house which survived until the mid 17th century, parts of the walling remained in the park until the early 19th century.

These are now in Salisbury Museum Acc. They may also be part of later garden earthworks from the post medieval landscaping of the park associated with the house. Page s : Figs.

Associated Monuments : Relationship type : General association. William Rufus who had a nasty accident with an arrow in the New Forest on 2nd August was buried in Winchester Cathedral. His bones are believed to be somewhere in the mortuary chests that house the remans of Saxon and Medieval Kings which were desecrated in by Parliamentarians.

Henry I and his first wife Edith or Matilda of Scotland as she became after her marriage are the first royal burial in Westminster Abbey following the interment of Edward Confessor who was buried in the abbey he founded in His second wife Adeline eventually became a nun and was buried in Affligem Abbey in Brabant. Henry was buried in Reading Abbey.

The royal tombs were destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries. It probably would have been complicated to transport his body to France given that the Barons War was underway and the french were invading England at the time. In actions at law the prioress was no longer represented by clerks. At least two of her three attorneys in Durrington manor court in were evidently laymen. The last recorded contact with the mother house is in , when Alice Fisher on her election as prioress sent her chaplain to the abbess with presents in token of submission.

She received a friendly letter in reply, outlining the nature of the Order, confirming her in her office, and enjoining her to observe the statutes and to keep the obits of Robert d'Arbrissel, Henry II, Richard I, and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Concerning the spiritual and moral life of the convent in the last years of its existence there is little to relate. In January the Bishop of Salisbury held a consecration in the priory church. Secular ladies were doubtless also a disturbing influence.

By direction of the Chancellor, Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreux, was in residence between and In the priory church was a chapel of the Virgin with an image of the Saviour crucified, to which image Sir Thomas de la Mare and many others were said to resort.

By the same instrument the prioress was licensed to choose confessors who should grant absolution to the pilgrims. It is not easy to assess the convent's economic condition, though the foregoing indulgence may indicate growing poverty. The grant of another corrody in is capable alike of indicating the convent's then prosperity or a reason for its decline. Mary's, Winchester, and exceeding the contributions of Romsey and Wherwell. Thus at the time of the Valor Amesbury was second in numbers and fifth in wealth among the nunneries of the realm.

Perhaps the truth is that the priory fell on evil days in the earlier part of the 15th century, but restored its fortunes towards its close, partly, like other monasteries, by granting beneficial leases, of which there are a few examples. Bulford manor was let to farm in The evidence of inquisitions post mortem would also suggest that in its last years the priory held in service the manors of 'le Conygar' in Amesbury , fn.

The inquisitions also record tenements in service in North Tidworth , fn. From the middle of the second decade of the century there is evidence of several bequests. Bishop Chandler of Salisbury left 40 s. In the yearly alms of the priory to the poor comprised a cask of red and a barrel of white herrings 19 s. These were Tristram Fauntleroy, the chief steward, doubtless a kinsman of a former prioress, Robert Sewey, the receiver general, and Richard Matthew, the auditor and deputy steward.

In his will made in , many years before his death, he speaks of his 'partner' John Beltton or Bolton, who shared the Durrington tithes with him and served the parish church of Amesbury.

There is little in this period to suggest that the Crown kept up a personal link with the priory. Henry VI visited the priory in and in On 29 March John Tregonwell, fn. They failed to persuade the 'abbess' Florence Bonnewe to surrender. She declared that if the king commanded her to leave her house she would gladly go, though she begged her bread; she cared for no pension and only asked to be left in peace. In August other commissioners visited the convent and successfully moved the prioress to resign.

They told Cromwell this on 9 August without delay, so that if he chose to prefer his nominee to the vacancy he might not be anticipated. Florence Bonnewe reported her resignation to him next day and applied for a pension 'during the litle tyme that it shall pleas God to graunte me to lyve'. Her name, however, is absent from the first pension list.

On 4 December next Joan Darrell surrendered the priory to yet another body of visitatorial commissioners who found the prioress and her sisters 'very conformable'.

There is a difficulty about the last two prioresses. Florence Bonnewe was holding office probably in and certainly in and It has therefore usually been concluded that her tenure was continuous until Joan Darrell's brief term began. It is known, however, that on 22 March, Cromwell received a fee for the election of a prioress. Did she enjoy some brief spell of supreme authority before she was put in to engineer the surrender?

Silver gilt oz. In the Wiltshire lands of the priory consisted of Amesbury manor and rectory with tithes in Ratfyn; rents, sheep pasture, a fishery, two inns, three mills, and the gate house or porter's lodge in Amesbury, all appurtenant to the monastery site; tolls of St.

John's fair; Bulford manor and rectory with a mill and tithes there and in 'Hindurington'; Melksham manor and hundred with churchscot, rents, certainties of tourns there and in 'Ile', Bowerhill and Newtown in Melksham , Beanacre, Whitley, Shaw, Woodrow, Woolmore, Seend Row, Seend, Poulshot, and Bulkington; sheriff's aid in Hilperton and Erlestoke and a fishery, a forge in Melksham, and two mills in Beanacre; Maddington manor and rectory with rents appurtenant in Winterbourne Stoke and Bourton; Barford St.

Martin manor, and tithes in North Tidworth; the capital messuage of Biddesden and lands there and in Berryfield; the advowson of Ludgershall and a pension out of the rectory; Durrington rectory; 'Alton' fn. George, Salisbury, and Enford; tithes in Milston; Boscombe manor with tithes; and tithes, certainties, and courts in Newton Tony. The Hampshire lands comprised Nether Wallop and Fifehead in Nether Wallop manor, with rents in Over and Nether Wallop, Oakley in Mottesfont , a meadow by Romsey, rams, and the tithe of their wool in Wallop, certainties, and the tolls of Danebury Hill fair in Nether Wallop; the capital messuage, certainties, and courts in Wigley with rents there and in Shelveley, Cadnam, and Winsor.

The Berkshire lands comprised the manor of Kintbury Amesbury, the rectory and advowson of Kintbury, with a mill, fishery, pannage of pigs, and rents, and churchscot in Clopton, Elcot, and Walcot in Kintbury and out of lands in Hurst, Hinton in Hurst , Didenham in Shinfield , and Farley in Swallowfield ; Chaddleworth manor; Fawley manor and rectory; West Challow and Petwick manor with the rectory of and rents in West Challow; Letcombe Regis rectory and advowson, tithes of East Challow chapel, and East Garston rectory and advowson.

He exchanged them with the Crown together with the priory lands in Amesbury itself fn. The precinct of the priory, with its paled park containing the graveyard , gardens, orchards, and fishponds, covered 12 acres.

The buildings lay athwart the site on which the present mansion stands and therefore some yards from the parish church and village street. The ground plan cannot be reconstructed, but we know a little of the individual buildings. There were chapels, similarly roofed, dedicated to Our Lady 32 ft. John, as befitted a church of the Fontevraldine Order. The choir, south transept, and vestry, or parts of them at least, were tiled. An octagonal steeple, timber-framed and coated with lead, measured 61 ft.

Each side of the octagon was 10 ft. Four bells weighing 14 cwt. There was a door in the south transept and possibly another on 'the coventsyde'. The main conventual buildings consisted of a cloister, with a flat timber-framed roof covered with lead, each tiled walk measuring by 12 ft. Brakspear with the reredorter by 16 ft , fn. There were perhaps two convent kitchens, for a 'new' one was eventually reroofed with lead from other parts of the buildings.

The hall is perhaps the same as the 'leaden hall' with a wooden floor upon which on the garden side two chambers abutted. There are, however, also references to a little chamber called 'the leaden chambers'. The convent kitchen formed one side of a quadrangle around which the prioress's lodging, consisting of hall, buttery, pantry, kitchen, and gatehouse, was ranged. An abbess's chamber 24 by 14 ft. There were also lodgings for steward, receiver, and priests.

Kent's chamber 65 by 10 ft , fn. There are also references to a tiled parlour 22 ft square , sometimes called the 'old' parlour, with a leaden 'bastard' roof and an inner chamber in it; a sacristy with lodgings adjacent; the 'old' infirmary, with chapel, cloister, and adjacent lodgings and outhouses. The infirmary cloister is perhaps the same as the 'little cloisters', beside which were two chambers, one tiled and the other measuring 17 by 15 ft.

Finally there are references to the chapel chamber, the high hall chamber, the 'long stake' with a haybarn adjoining, and the 'old' stables of 4 rooms, built of stone with a tiled 'cutting' at one end; a wheat barn, the 'great barn', a gatehouse and houses in the base court, a bakehouse, a laundry, Master Homer's house and chambers with leaden roof, and the Middle House by the Park. The last was built of stone, roofed with slates, and was of two floors with a staircase.

The chief profit from the monastery buildings was the lead fothers which was sold to Hertford. The metal sheeting was stripped first from the spire and melted in the frater. The roofs of such other buildings as were considered superfluous were removed in August and September and 'cast' in the 'mydquere'. A plumbery was formed for these operations. Glass, iron, timber, grain-stone, gravestones, and large quantities of tiles, whole and broken, were sold.

The chapel chamber was used to keep safe the glass and iron. The north transept was used as a dump, first for tiles, and then for timber. The spire was pulled down in April and its timbers fired with gunpowder, doubtless to ease the removal of the lead. Later a part of the great cloister was broken down. Otherwise, however, even the 'superfluous' buildings do not seem to have been systematically destroyed. The great houses of the monastery were 'in great ruin and decay' by , and the priory church was still a source from which Lord Hertford could take stone and lead.

Built into a wall the coffin was still visible in The Duchess of Queensberry busied herself in overthrowing some old walls in Some walls with round-headed windows which stood between the west front of the mansion and the river could be remembered by old people living in A piece of loopholed wall which still stands near Grey Bridge is thought to have been part of the precinct boundary; and the old vicarage which until the end of the 19th century stood partly on the site of the Antrobus burial ground is said to have been another relic.

Some old stones and a 'niche' were still embedded in the vicarage garden wall in Building operations in exposed some tiled paving and other medieval remains and thus established anew the forgotten fact that the mansion stood upon part of the priory site. In the foundations of a room c. Edward Kite, who recorded the excavations, suggested that they had formed part of the infirmary, though on unconvincing grounds. Kemm, who had already furnished a less particular description, argued that they marked the site of the chapterhouse.

Red and white clay is available on the spot and a kiln existed in In Canon Jackson advanced the theory, apparently for the first time, that the existing parish church might be the original convent church. Amesbury Abbey occupies a unique position in the Stonehenge landscape. According to British History online , the recorded history of the Abbey can be traced back to AD, some 1, years ago. Perhaps in exploring its past and association with the cult of St.

Melor , echos from an earlier time — and of our ancestors, who built Stonehenge a little under two miles to the west — may reside. Facts surrounding St. Melor are, of course, elusive. The linked story above of St.

Melor, which include a magical silver hand, a severed head that speaks, and untamed bulls, is typical of the folklore of Britain and its neighbouring Islands.

Another example of a nuance of the silver hand story is also witnessed in the Slavic myth of Panagia Tricherousa, and there are many others. There is also a fresh water source close by at Blick Mead, which certainly today is the nearest source of fresh drinking water to Stonehenge itself. During the dissolution of the monasteries, ownership of the Abbey land and buildings was transferred to Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, on 16 February