Based on documentary evidence, the Priory Church of St Marys in Abergavenny has been a place of worship since the late 11th century; this book traces the archaeology, history and conservation of this most impressive building, delving deep into its anatomy.

Based on documentary evidence, the Priory Church of St Marys in Abergavenny has been a place of worship since the late 11th century; this book traces the archaeology, history and conservation of this most impressive building, delving deep into its anatomy.

The first account of the dissolution of the monasteries for fifty years—exploring its profound impact on the people of Tudor England “This is a book about people, though, not ideas, and as a detailed account of an extraordinary human drama with a cast of thousands, it is an exceptional piece of historical writing.”—Lucy Wooding, Times Literary Supplement Shortly before Easter, 1540 saw the end of almost a millennium of monastic life in England. Until then religious houses had acted as a focus for education, literary, and artistic expression and even the creation of regional and national identity. Their closure, carried out in just four years between 1536 and 1540, caused a dislocation of people and a disruption of life not seen in England since the Norman Conquest. Drawing on the records of national and regional archives as well as archaeological remains, James Clark explores the little-known lives of the last men and women who lived in England’s monasteries before the Reformation. Clark challenges received wisdom, showing that buildings were not immediately demolished and Henry VIII’s subjects were so attached to the religious houses that they kept fixtures and fittings as souvenirs. This rich, vivid history brings back into focus the prominent place of abbeys, priories, and friaries in the lives of the English people.

Christianity, in its Catholic, Protestant and Nonconformist forms, has played an enormous role in the history of Wales and in the defining and shaping of Welsh identity over the past two thousand years. Biblical place names, an urban and rural landscape littered with churches, chapels, crosses and sacred sites, a bardic and literary tradition deeply imbued with Christian themes in both the Welsh and English languages, and the songs sung by tens of thousands of rugby supporters at the national stadium in Cardiff, all hint at a Christian presence that was once universal. Yet for many in contemporary Wales, the story of the development of Christianity in their country remains little known. While the history of Christianity in Wales has been a subject of perennial interest for Welsh historians, much of their work has been highly specialised and not always accessible to a general audience. Standing on the shoulders of some of Wales’s finest historians, this is the first single-volume history of Welsh Christianity from its origins in Roman Britain to the present day. Drawing on the expertise of four leading historians of the Welsh Christian tradition, this volume is specifically designed for the general reader, and those beginning their exploration of Wales’s Christian past.

This report describes excavations at the St Mary's Priory and cathedral church, Coventry, conducted between 1999 and 2003 as part of the Phoenix Initiative, Coventry's Millennium Project. The Priory was located on the site of a late Saxon Abbey whose benefactors were Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Lady Godiva. Its church became a cathedral in the early 12th C AD and the priory grew to become one of the largest monastic communities in the region. It was suppressed on 15th January 1539 and the cathedral became the only one in the Kingdom to be destroyed as a result of dissolution. This excavation report describes the history of the buildings and then presents new discoveries about the cathedral, the monastic house, the service buildings and priory mill. Detailed studies of finds include chapters on floor tiles, apocalyptic paintings in the Chapter House, pottery, coins, leather, wood, glass and human bone.