Qualla: Lilleshall Abbey

Lilleshall Abbey: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geoff Boswell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look closely at the lopsided romanesque archway of Lilleshall Abbey's main west portal and you will see, between the masonry pillars that flank it, the sheer mass of stone meant to hold up a great western tower that no longer exists. The tower probably came down during the English Civil War. The Belmeis brothers who founded the abbey in the 1140s could not have imagined a war between Parliament and a king, but they had founded it during another civil war, the Anarchy of King Stephen and Empress Matilda, and they knew enough about violence to take care that the abbey would survive whoever was on the throne. It survived for almost four centuries. The west tower did not survive the cannon.

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Image: Geoff Boswell | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lilleshall Abbey: Two Brothers and a Civil War

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lilleshall was founded between 1145 and 1148 by two Shropshire brothers, Richard and Philip de Belmeis. Richard was Archdeacon of Middlesex and dean of the college of St Alkmund in Shrewsbury. Philip was lord of Tong. They were nephews of a former Bishop of London, and between th...

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Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lilleshall Abbey: An Estate Across Five Counties

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Novacool88 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Within a century Lilleshall had become a major landlord. Its core estate lay in Shropshire and Staffordshire, but the abbey also held land in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Norfolk, and even Yorkshire, with houses in Welshpool, Newport, Sta...

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Image: Novacool88 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lilleshall Abbey: The Dissolution and a Stand by Cannon

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frances Stackhouse Acton, Public domain. By the early 14th century the abbey was in financial trouble, criticised by visiting bishops for poor accounting, too many corrodies, and the brewer's incompetence. It survived, just, and by the time of Henry VIII's first wave of dissolutions in 1536, Lilleshall was technically l...

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Image: Frances Stackhouse Acton | Public domain

Lilleshall Abbey: Walking the Ruin

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cruciform church was over sixty metres long and had a stone-vaulted roof. The main walls still stand, restored after the 1960s when mining subsidence forced English Heritage's predecessors to prop them with timber. The west front confronts you first: a wide central doorway un...

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Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lilleshall Abbey: Why Lilleshall Survives

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeremy Bolwell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Most English monastic ruins were quarried for their stone within a generation of dissolution. Lilleshall escaped that fate because the Leveson family bought it and used what they could and left the rest. Their seat moved elsewhere, the abbey site sank back into farmland, and the ...

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Image: Jeremy Bolwell | CC BY-SA 2.0