Qualla: St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roy Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 21 July 1403, the armies of Henry IV and Henry Percy met north of Shrewsbury. The fighting cost both sides heavily, and when it was over - with Hotspur dead on the field and the king victorious - the bodies of perhaps a thousand soldiers lay in the meadows of Hateley Field. Three years later, the parish rector of nearby Albright Hussey persuaded the local lord of the manor and eventually the king himself that a chantry chapel should rise on the spot, staffed by chaplains whose job was to sing daily masses for the souls of the dead. They built the church on top of what is almost certainly the mass burial pit. The chaplains chanted for the dead until 1548. The church survives, lonely and red-sandstone, on a slight rise in a Shropshire field that is still called, six centuries later, Battlefield.

Image: Roy Hughes | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: The Battle in the Meadow

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marion Haworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Battle of Shrewsbury was one of the first major engagements in English history to involve massed longbow fire from both sides, and the casualties were horrific - skeletons exhumed from the area in recent archaeological surveys show arrow-wounds and bone-deep blade injuries co...

Image: Marion Haworth | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: Roger Ive's Quiet Idea

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. The initiative for the church appears to have come not from the king but from Roger Ive, the parish rector of nearby Albright Hussey - a man described in the records as forceful, capable, and persistent. On 28 October 1406, Henry IV granted Richard Hussey, the lord of the manor, ...

Image: Graham Hogg | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: Life in the Chantry

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 4.0. The chaplains lived together in a three-storey building beside the south side of the chancel - traces of this living quarters still survive in the masonry. They ate two meals a day in a common dining hall, under a strict rule of obedience to the master. They could not leave the c...

Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: Dissolution and Decay

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dpaajones, CC BY-SA 3.0. The college lost its tax exemption under the Tudors. Henry VIII's Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 recorded a gross income of £56 1s 4d - small by the standards of major monastic foundations, but enough to keep six chaplains in modest circumstances. The college was not dissolved with...

Image: Dpaajones | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield: What Stands Today

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 4.0. St Mary Magdalene's is now a redundant Anglican church, no longer used for regular worship, cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. It is listed Grade II* on the National Heritage List for England - the second-highest grade of historic protection. The fabric is medieval, wi...

Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 4.0