Qualla: Haughmond Abbey

Haughmond Abbey: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Grist, CC0. When the first Augustinian canons settled at Haughmond - probably some time in the late eleventh or early twelfth century - they did so on the slope of a small wooded ridge a few miles east of Shrewsbury. They built modestly at first, perhaps as a hermit community gathered around an early prior named Fulk. The site offered exactly what an Augustinian house needed: enough land for a small farm, fresh water from a stream below the ridge, and a powerful local patron prepared to defend their interests in court. The patron was Alan FitzFlaad, founder of the FitzAlan dynasty, and his successors as earls of Arundel would protect the abbey through four centuries of fortune and disaster.

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Image: Tony Grist | CC0

Haughmond Abbey: FitzAlan Country

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Havercroft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Alan FitzFlaad arrived in England through Henry I's military retinue and built his Shropshire estates around the lands of the dispossessed sheriff Rainald de Bailleul. His son William FitzAlan took up the patronage of Haughmond and granted a fishery at Preston Boats - on the Seve...

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Image: Keith Havercroft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Haughmond Abbey: The Empress and the Charter

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0. William FitzAlan picked the wrong side at the wrong time. When civil war broke out between King Stephen and Empress Matilda in 1138, FitzAlan held Shrewsbury Castle for Matilda. Stephen besieged it, took it, and hanged the surviving garrison. FitzAlan fled into exile. He was not ...

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Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Haughmond Abbey: What the Canons Built

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Grist, CC0. Construction in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries gave Haughmond a substantial complex: an aisled church about 60 metres long, a cloister to the south, a chapter house, refectory, and abbot's lodging. Much of the church has gone - only its outlines and fragments of the we...

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Image: Tony Grist | CC0

Haughmond Abbey: The Dissolution and After

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Grist, CC0. Haughmond was dissolved in September 1539 - one of the larger Shropshire monasteries to fall in the second wave of Cromwell's suppression. The abbot, John Smarte, signed the surrender. The site was granted to Sir Edward Littleton, then sold to Sir Rowland Hill, the Lord Mayor of ...

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Image: Tony Grist | CC0

Haughmond Abbey: Visiting the Ruins

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand in the cloister garth on a summer evening and the place quiets to almost nothing - the click of jackdaws on the broken church wall, the wind in the old yew trees, the distant rumble of a tractor in a field. The ridge behind shelters the site from the prevailing westerlies. ...

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Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 3.0