Qualla: Croxden Abbey

Croxden Abbey: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stocksy, Public domain. In 1176, twelve monks left the abbey of Aunay-sur-Odon in Normandy and travelled to a valley in Staffordshire to start over. Their patron was Bertram III de Verdun, lord of Alton, who endowed them with land on the condition that they pray forever for his parents and his foster-father Richard de Humez, for himself, for his wife Rohais, and for his successors. The Cistercians were exactly the right order for such a remote site: they preferred wild places, ran their own farms, and built austerely beautiful churches in stone. The abbey they raised here became wealthier than anyone had reason to predict, supplying more wool to Italian merchants than any other religious house in the county. The west wall of their church still stands, its two doorways and lancet windows almost complete after eight and a half centuries.

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Image: Stocksy | Public domain

Croxden Abbey: Wool and Florence

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Dunford, CC BY-SA 2.0. Croxden's prosperity came from sheep. The Staffordshire hills were good grazing, and the Cistercian system, run by lay brothers under the rule of the choir monks, was perfectly adapted to large-scale farming. By 1315 the abbey was the leading wool exporter among Staffordshire's r...

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Image: Dave Dunford | CC BY-SA 2.0

Croxden Abbey: Sixteen Weeks of Resistance

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Buckingham, CC BY-SA 2.0. Late in the 1310s the abbey came into dispute with the de Furnivall family, into whose hands the manor of Alton and patronage of Croxden had passed. The disagreement concerned de Furnivall's use of abbey lands and property. The monks, with no army and no political weight, did wha...

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Image: Paul Buckingham | CC BY-SA 2.0

Croxden Abbey: The Dissolution

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alun Salt from Derby and Leicester, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Croxden survived for another two centuries after the de Furnivall dispute, but the larger forces gathering against English monasticism were unstoppable. The abbey was surrendered in 1538, two years into Henry VIII's dissolution programme. The last abbot received an annual pension...

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Image: Alun Salt from Derby and Leicester, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Croxden Abbey: What the Years Spared

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alun Salt from Derby and Leicester, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mid-13th-century chapel continued as the parish church of Croxden until 1886, when a new building was put up to the north. The site passed in 1936 to the Ministry of Public Building and Works, which carried out the excavations of 1968 that revealed the foundations of the lost...

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Image: Alun Salt from Derby and Leicester, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0