Buildwas Abbey was a Cistercian (originally Savigniac) monastery located on the banks of the River Severn, at Buildwas in Shropshire, England - today about west of Ironbridge. Founded by the local bishop in 1135, it was sparsely endowed at the outset but enjoyed several periods of growth and increasing wealth: notably under Abbot Ranulf in the second half of the 12th century and again from the mid-13th century, when large numbers of acquisitions were made from the local landed gentry. Abbots were regularly used as agents by the Plantagenet monarchs in their attempts to subdue Ireland and Wales and the abbey acquired a daughter house in each country.
It was a centre of learning, with a substantial library, and was noted for its discipline until the economic and demographic crises of the 14th century brought about decline and difficulties, exacerbated by conflict and political instability in the Welsh Marches. The abbey was suppressed in 1536 as part of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Substantial remains of the abbey church and monks' quarters remain and are in the care of English Heritage.
Foundation
Buildwas Abbey was a Cistercian house, although originally founded as a Savigniac monastery in 1135 by Roger de ClintonL. Janauschek. Originum Cisterciensium, p. 104 (1129–1148), Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. The short-lived Savigniac congregation was a reformed and ascetic branch of the Benedictine Order, centred on the Abbey of Savigny in Normandy, and dating only from 1112.Walcott. The Four Minsters Round the Wrekin, p. 10.
Buildwas manor was land previously belonging to the diocese. In the Domesday Book the manor of Buildwas was assessed as one hide and was home to nine households, five of them headed by slaves, four by villeins and one by the reeve. It had a mill and woodland, with 200 pigs. It was then worth 45 shillings, as before the Norman Conquest of England, although the value had slipped a little in the intervening period.Domesday text translation at Open Domesday. The dedication of the abbey was to St Mary and St Chad: the same as Lichfield Cathedral.Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, note 1. The foundation charter itself has been lost, but a poor transcription survives among the manuscripts of Roger Dodsworth, now in the Bodleian Library. This was printed by Robert William Eyton, the great Shropshire antiquarian, who considered that the list of witnesses, including parties who were soon afterwards drawn into the civil strife of King Stephen's reign on opposing sides, was designed to suggest an early date for the document – an impression he considered false.Eyton. Antiquities of Shropshire, volume 6, pp. 321-2. The first abbot is named as Ingenulf. The transcript omits details of the bishop's grants to the new abbey. However, these are listed in a confirmation issued by Richard I. Like the transcript, this addresses Roger de Clinton as Bishop of Chester and states that his donation was of Buildwas itself, with its surrounding woodland, assarts and appurtenances; land at Meole, just south of Shrewsbury, with its burgesses and a due (tax) called greffegh; churchscot, a due for the support of the clergy, from the hundreds of Condover and Wrockwardine; et in territorio Licheffelddensi hominem unum nomine Edricum ("in the territory of Lichfield one man named Edric").Dugdale. Monasticon Anglicanum, volume 5, p. 359, no. 16. Edric's rôle is not specified but presumably involved some kind of work on the abbey's behalf in the diocesan centre.
The earlier confirmation by King Stephen, issued apparently while he was involved in the siege of Shrewsbury in 1138, gave few details of the grants, although it did give the size of the site as one hide, as in Domesday. Instead it concentrated on recognising the abbey's immunity from taxes and other exactions, including scot and lot and Danegeld.Cronne et al. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, volume 3, pp. 49-50 Stephen was a strong supporter and promoter of the Savigniac community, whose mother house stood within his own county of Mortain, which he lost to the Angevins during the Anarchy.Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, note anchor and note 6. One of the witnesses of Stephen's confirmation was Philip de Belmeis, an important Shropshire landholder. Together with his wife, Matilda, Philip subsequently made an important grant to the abbey of land at Ruckley in Tong, with common pasture and pannage in his woods towards Brewood and the Lizard.Eyton. Antiquities of Shropshire, volume 2, p. 203. The grant is not dated but makes clear that the abbey was still part of the Savigniac community, as it committed all Savigniac houses to pray for Philip, Matilda and their family. The Savigniac houses were all absorbed into the Cistercian order in 1147, and the merger was confirmed by a bull of Pope Eugenius III on 11 April 1148. By this time Philip had transferred his support to the rival Augustinians, granting lands which allowed the establishment of Lilleshall Abbey.Eyton. Antiquities of Shropshire, volume 2, p. 204.
Era of growth under Abbot Ranulf Buildwas Abbey was initially quite small and poor, as its early endowments were not great in total,Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, note anchor 9. even if, as seems likely, it received its grant of Little Buildwas, across the river from the monastery, from William FitzAlan, Lord of Oswestry, in its early years: the original charter is lost and the grant is known from the second William FitzAlan's later confirmation.Dugdale. Monasticon Anglicanum, volume 5, p. 359, no. 18.Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, footnote 8. Ingenulf, the first abbot, was fairly obscure, but the abbey entered a period of growth and development under Abbot Ranulf, who is known to have taken over by 1155, since a charter relating to Lilleshall which he witnessed cannot be later than that year.Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, footnote 157. His abbacy coincided very closely with the reign of Henry II.
Financial and cultural advance
Richard I's confirmation of the abbey's lands, issued from the hand of his chancellor, William de Longchamp in 1189, two years after Ranulf's death,Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, note anchor 14. suggests that considerable progress had been made in acquiring land and other sources of income during his abbacy. In addition to the early endowments, it lists Bishop Richard Peche's grants of a messuage in the Foregate at Chester and of a mill worth four shillings at Burne (possibly Burntwood) near Lichfield; Brocton, Staffordshire, from Gerald of Brockton and his son; Richard of Pitchford's gift of the services of a man called Richard Crasset, who lived at Cosford, Shropshire; half of Hatton, south of Shifnal, from Adam of Hatton and Reginald, his son; half of Walton, Staffordshire from Walter Fitz Herman; land at Ivonbrook Grange, near Grangemill in Derbyshire, from Henry Fitz Fulk; land at Cauldon in north-west Staffordshire from William of Cauldon; and a house from Robert Fitz Thomas, although the location is partially erased.
The increasing wealth of the abbey was probably reflected in the enrichment of its library. Oxford University's database of the medieval libraries of Great Britain records 57 volumes that belonged at some time to the library at Buildwas,MLGB3 search results for Buildwas. including two that subsequently found their way to St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, although Trinity College, Cambridge has by far the largest collection of former Buildwas books. Seventeen of the 57 are definitively dated to the 12th century and a further six possibly so.Victoria County History in 1973 reckoned about forty books extant, with more than a dozen dating to the 12th century. Cf. Angold et al. House of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Buildwas, note anchor 12. This was based on a 1964 reference work by Neil Ripley Ker, which has since been incorporated into Oxford University's online reference tool (MLGB3). Although published in 2015, the website does not yet cover volumes discovered or provenanced later than 1987. Two are internally dated to the time of Ranulf. One of these is a copy of works of Augustine of Hippo, with its attribution to Buildwas Abbey and the date 1167 written above the title in red and black letters.MLGB3 item 559. A glossed copy of the Book of Leviticus has the date 1179 on the 7th folio.MLGB3 item 542.
The additional income must also have played a major part in the decision to press ahead with construction of up-to-date stone buildings for the monastic community.
Construction of the abbey There is no documentary evidence of the construction of the abbey at Buildwas, but it seems to have lagged a little behind Kirkstall Abbey, now in a Leeds suburb, which was built probably between 1152 and about 1170.Bilson, J. The Architecture of the Cistercians, with special reference to some of their earlier churches in England, p. 199. Buildwas and Kirkstall are of the simplest and earliest pattern of Cistercian churches in Britain and are broadly comparable.Bilson, p. 206. In both cases, the builders became more adventurous as they progressed toward the west from the eastern end of the church.Bilson, p. 226. Both churches have a stone tower over the crossing, although this was forbidden by the General Chapter of the Cistercians in 1157.Bilson, p. 233. The presbytery at Buildwas was without aisles and the aisles of the nave had wooden ceilings, rather than the more elaborate vaulting found in later buildings.Bilson, pp. 241, 239n. The piers of the aisles are also simple cylinders.Bilson, pp. 244. While still definitely Romanesque, Buildwas has details in the design of capitals, bases and windows which prefigure the transition to Gothic architecture that came a little later.Bilson, p. 277. The church building and monks’ quarters were constructed in local sandstone and completed within the century: the infirmary and abbot's lodging were still under construction around 1220, or perhaps not yet started,Eyton. Antiquities of Shropshire, volume 6, p. 334. when the abbey gained access to the stone quarries and timber of nearby Broseley.
Daughter houses
In 1154 Pope Anastasius IV, at the request of Abbot Richard of Savigny, listed the Savigniac houses, now following the rule of the Cistercian brothers but subject to the abbot of Savigny. Each house is named, along with any other houses subject to it. Bildwas cum pertinentiis suis (with its appurtenances) appears alone, without any dependent monasteries.Martene and Durand. Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, column 434. However, in December 1156 Abbot Richard and his convent of Savigny, addressing Abbot Ranulf of Buildwas, declared: commitimus atque concedimus vobis et domui vestre curam et dispositionem domus nostre Sancte Marie Dubline imperpetuum habendam. ("We commit and submit to you and your house the care and disposition of our house of St Mary, Dublin, to be held in perpetuity.")Hunter, J. Ecclesiastical Documents, p. 51, no. 3. In 1157, Basingwerk Abbey in Flintshire was handed over to Ranulf and Buildwas Abbey on the same terms as the Irish house.Hunter, J. Ecclesiastical Documents, p. 52, no. 3. Both Basingwerk and St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, had formerly belonged to Combermere Abbey in Cheshire.Martene and Durand. Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, column 433. An attempt in 1177 to reverse this change of dependence failed and prompted Savigny to send a collection of pertinent documents and a covering note to the abbot of Cîteaux, the head of the Cistercian order.Hunter, J. Ecclesiastical Documents, p. 54, no. 3.