Qualla: Pershore Abbey

Pershore Abbey: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Merrett from Daventry, England, CC BY 2.0. In 1540 the townspeople of Pershore did something unusual. The Crown's commissioners had arrived to dismantle their Benedictine abbey, as they were dismantling abbeys all over England, but the people of Pershore offered Henry VIII £400 - a substantial sum then - to leave them the choir and the tower so they could keep them as their parish church. The king accepted. The nave came down, along with the cloisters and the dormitories. The choir, the south transept, and the magnificent central tower remained standing. They are still standing. The Church of the Holy Cross, as it has been called since, is a Norman abbey cut in half and inhabited like a museum of itself.

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Image: David Merrett from Daventry, England | CC BY 2.0

Pershore Abbey: An Anglo-Saxon Beginning

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 3.0. The abbey at Pershore claims an Anglo-Saxon origin that is half-lost in fire and forged charters. A chronicle written around 1150 puts the foundation in the year 683, when Oswald, brother of King Osric of the Hwicce, established a minster on this gravel terrace above the River Av...

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pershore Abbey: The Tower at the Centre

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jules & Jenny from Lincoln, UK, CC BY 2.0. What you see today is the eastern arm and crossing of a much larger building. The central tower, completed in the mid-13th century, is the abbey's signature: a square Norman drum with later pinnacles added in 1871, lifting almost 30 metres above the surrounding fields. The lanter...

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Image: Jules & Jenny from Lincoln, UK | CC BY 2.0

Pershore Abbey: Six Bells from 1729

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mrfinch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pershore has a ring of eight bells, six of them cast in 1729 by the younger Abraham Rudhall in Gloucester. The treble was added in 1814 by Thomas Mears at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The fourth bell cracked, was recast in 1897 by J. Barwell of Birmingham with what one report de...

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Image: Mrfinch | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pershore Abbey: The North Transept That Fell

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeff Gogarty, CC BY-SA 2.0. The townspeople had bought half a building, and half a building was harder to keep standing than they realised. In 1686 the north transept simply collapsed; a blank wall was built across the open scar where it had been. Two centuries later, with the building visibly sagging towar...

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Image: Jeff Gogarty | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pershore Abbey: Buried Foundations and a Quiet Park

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Saffron Blaze, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk out the south door and the grass is unusually flat - too flat for an old churchyard. Beneath it lie the foundations of everything Henry VIII's commissioners pulled down: the cloister walks, the chapter house, the refectory, the dormitories of the Benedictine monks. They were...

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Image: Saffron Blaze | CC BY-SA 3.0