Cadfael's Abbey

Monday 8 October 2007. I was running a workshop for Shrewsbury College the following day which required a stopover on Monday night. I arrived early enough to have a look at something connected to a series of books I was reading.

I couldn't be in Shrewsbury and not have a look at the remains of the abbey. The Benedictine Abbey was founded in 1083 by Roger de Montgomery, the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, a relative of William the Conqueror and, of course, was made famous by Ellis Peters as the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul, the setting for the Cadfael books. It contains the relics or remains of Saint Winifred, a Welsh saint. The story was that she was visited by a prince who wanted to seduce her, but she ran from him and he was so enraged, he went after her, sword in hand and cut off her head. Never the best way to woo a maiden... Her uncle, St Beuno, found them and prayed for her revival which was granted, her wound being invisible except for a thin white line around her neck.

The acquisition of the saint's remains forms the background for the plot of the first Cadfael book, A Morbid Taste for Bones. There is obviously a great deal of fiction mingled with the facts, but the facts of the translation (the moving of the relics from Gwytherin near Conwy to Shrewsbury) is a fair representation of history. Prior Robert of the abbey, negotiated and carried out the disinterment and transportation of the body, the journey carried out on foot by the monks over the course of a week. He wrote the saint's life story shortly after the move along with an account of his work to bring about her move to Shrewsbury. He later became the abbey's fifth Abbot.

The abbey and its associated buildings and land were huge. It is much less so now. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries Shrewsbury was one of the last monasteries to surrender to being dissolved - more due to it being towards the end of the Commissioners' circuit than to any active resistance.

Over the following centuries the abbey church was retained as the parish church of Holy Cross, though it was reduced in height in the 1600s by one storey (the clerestory) after the roof collapsed and it also lost its transcepts. Broken brickwork on the existing building makes it obvious where losses occurred. However many monastic buildings survived into the 1700s but most of them disappeared from then on, particularly when the main London Road, the A5, was built by Thomas Telford on the opposite side of the parish church.

The refectory pulpit stands alone in a closed off area in the car park, whilst the main road runs between it and the abbey church that it was once a part of. From this pulpit Biblical texts would be read whilst the monks ate their meals.

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