Qualla: Shaftesbury Abbey

Shaftesbury Abbey: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Thomas Cromwell's commissioners drew up the lists of monasteries to be dissolved in 1539, Shaftesbury Abbey ranked second in England by wealth. Only Syon Abbey in west London was richer. The joke at the time - attributed to no one in particular but recorded by William of Malmesbury and repeated for centuries - was that if the abbess of Shaftesbury could marry the abbot of Glastonbury, their son would be richer than the King of England. It was the kind of joke that Henry VIII did not find funny. On 23 March 1539 the last abbess, Elizabeth Zouche, signed the deed of surrender. The buildings were stripped, the lead pulled from the roofs, and within a generation the chief glory of south Wessex - in Thomas Hardy's phrase - had been swept away.

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Shaftesbury Abbey: Alfred's Daughter

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0. King Alfred the Great founded the convent at Shaftesbury around 888 and installed his own daughter Aethelgifu as the first abbess. This was not an unusual arrangement - royal daughters were regularly placed in religious life, and royal foundations gained both prestige and politic...

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: Christine Matthews | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shaftesbury Abbey: The Murdered King

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Irid Escent, CC BY-SA 2.0. The event that made Shaftesbury famous was the arrival of a body. On 18 March 978, the young king Edward, son of Edgar the Peaceable, was murdered at Corfe Castle - probably on the orders of his stepmother Aelfthryth, who wanted her own son Aethelred on the throne. Edward was bur...

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: Irid Escent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shaftesbury Abbey: A Self-Rising Tomb

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PaleCloudedWhite, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1001 it was recorded that the tomb in which Edward lay had begun, regularly, to rise out of the ground. King Aethelred - the same brother whose accession had required Edward's death - instructed the bishops to raise the relics to a more fitting place. On 20 June 1001 the bones...

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: PaleCloudedWhite | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shaftesbury Abbey: The Dissolution

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Hutchins, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cromwell's men came in 1539. The abbey was demolished and its lands sold off; the town of Shaftesbury - which had grown up around the institution as its pilgrim and supply hub - went into temporary economic decline. Sir Thomas Arundell bought the abbey and much of the town in 154...

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: Jonathan Hutchins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shaftesbury Abbey: What Remains

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk up Gold Hill in Shaftesbury - the steep cobbled street that became famous for a 1973 Hovis bread television advertisement - and you reach the abbey site at the top of the hill. The buildings are gone. What survives is the footprint: foundations, low walls, fragments of the n...

Read more: Shaftesbury Abbey on Qualla

Image: Chris Downer | CC BY-SA 2.0