Pershore Abbey

By Worcestershire Life on June 28th 2011

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The week before Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married in Westminster Abbey, a small party of Worcestershire churchgoers met the Queen in the same great church to take part in one of Christianity’s most ancient ceremonies. The occasion was the annual distribution of Maundy Money, dating from the fifth century. Ironically, the reason the worshippers from Pershore Abbey were invited to the service, held for the first time on the Queen’s birthday, was due in large part to an audacious land grab which took place nearly 1,000 years ago.

The year was 1065 and a few months before his death, King Edward the Confessor completed and dedicated Westminster Abbey, his sublime ecclesiastical creation which epitomised his peaceful reign and which still contains his shrine. To endow what would become one of the world’s greatest churches, he used the wealth from lands owned by the older abbey at Pershore – but regrettably neglected to inform the Abbot of Pershore about what he was doing.

The story goes that when the Abbot found out, he flew into a rage and banned retainers and servants of the Crown and Westminster from entering his abbey. St Andrew’s Church, which still stands outside the abbey on the opposite side of Church Street, was built so that they had somewhere to worship in Pershore. It is now used as a parish centre.

Despite this unfortunate beginning, the link between the two abbeys has remained ever since and some historians have dubbed Pershore Abbey “the mother of Westminster”. Senior figures at Westminster still have the final say in the appointment of any new Vicar of Pershore. When the present incumbent, the Reverend Kenneth Crawford, was appointed, he faced a 14-strong interview panel, which, in addition to senior clergy and lay people from the Diocese of Worcester, included the sub-dean from Westminster Abbey and the Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Mr Crawford is also required to carry out priestly duties each year at Westminster Abbey and it was through this he was invited to put forward three of his senior parishioners to be recipients of Maundy Money this year to recognise their service to Pershore Abbey.

The moment was symbolically appropriate because the Abbey Church of the Holy Cross, Pershore – to give it its proper name – and its local community have been inextricably interdependent since the first monastery was founded there in 689AD. The abbey enjoyed 200 years of relative tranquillity under the stability of the strong kings of Mercia, but this gave way to more turbulent times.

The ninth century brought fear and uncertainty in the face of Viking raids and Danish rule and then there was an anti-monastic reaction which saw two-thirds of the Pershore estates being seized by Earl Alfhere of Mercia. Legend has it that the earl paid for his crime by being eaten alive by rats.

Next came a series of disastrous fires. The first, in 1002, destroyed the old Saxon building which took 18 years to replace, and this was followed by Edward the Confessor’s appropriation of the Pershore Abbey lands.  The Norman Conquest took place the next year and, by the end of the century, work started on the Norman abbey of which the south transept and tower piers remain.

The work was completed in 1130, but in 1223 fire destroyed the Norman quire and necessitated another rebuild. In 1288, a third major fire started in the monastic bakehouse and became so severe that it spread to many houses in the town and caused the upper part of the abbey’s Norman tower to fall, bringing down the quire vault. The rebuilding work this time lasted from 1290 to 1330.

There followed a  peaceful interval of 200 years. This was violently interrupted by Henry VIII’s paranoia in the wake of England’s split from the Roman Catholic Church leading to the dissolution of the monasteries and the end of the monastic system which had been pivotal to the nation’s social order. The King’s suppression commissioners, who were tasked with closing down the monastic houses, were given extra ammunition against the monks at Pershore by a disgruntled monk. The letter he wrote to the King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, alleging drunkenness and gambling by his dissolute fellow inmates, is still in existence.

In 1540, the abbey was surrendered to the King’s commissioners and the monastic buildings, the Norman nave, the Lady Chapel and St Edburgha’s Chapel were demolished and their building materials were sold. However, the parishioners of Pershore bought the monks’ quire for £400 to be their parish church and thereby ensured that nearly half the abbey, including its majestic tower, would survive until the 21st century.

It has, however, been a continual struggle ever since. In 1686, the north buttress was built to support the tower after the north transept fell and the abbey gradually deteriorated over the next two centuries. A description of the interior during the 19th century makes very bleak reading with damp running down the walls and the interior conditions very much like a dilapidated agricultural barn.

When the east parapet blew down in a gale in 1861, the parish was stirred into action. A restoration committee was formed, the south east transept   rebuilt and most of the present furniture and stained glass fitted. The lantern tower was opened up by removing the belfry floor to expose the beautiful internal tracery panelling.

There were further problems in 1913 when severe cracks in the west wall of the south transept were revealed and two western buttresses were built following concern that the tower was beginning to lean westwards. Clearly, a more businesslike approach was needed to the ongoing problem of maintaining a very old building.

The answer came in 1931 when Dr W. T. Farncombe founded the Friends of Pershore Abbey to find ways of helping to fund the necessary repairs and upkeep. Today the Friends have more than 500 members, many of whom come from the Pershore area but including some who live further afield and even overseas. Members do not need to be churchgoers or to have any particular connection with the abbey, but are just glad to offer support and to be kept in touch with its activities.

The Friends have been able to support major restoration works in the abbey. In 1996/9, they contributed more than £300,000 towards urgent strengthening of the south transept and tower, quinquennial maintenance works throughout the abbey, the new flooring with under-floor heating in the nave and side aisles, lighting installations, acoustics and general electrical work.

Since 2005, they have contributed to the £45,000 spent on small works on the roof, tower, guttering and the results of subsidence. They have also provided extras like railings round a small pit showing a section of the original Saxon foundations and refurbishment of the flower and vicar’s vestries. This year, they are contributing up to £60,000 for the replacement of the south transept window and repairs to the tower roof.  With the abbey’s annual running costs now amounting to £200,000, the Friends’ help is essential in maintaining a building which is used not only for worship, but also for other public events like classical concerts.

“Pershore Abbey has been a centre for Christian Worship for over 1300 years and the present abbey celebrated its Millennium in 1972,” said Mr Crawford.

“What remains of the abbey is the best part: the monk’s quire (which is now the nave) with its unique ploughshare vaulting, the combined triforium and clerestory, and the magnificent tower with its lantern and free-standing ringing platform. It is still one of the finest examples of Norman and Early English architecture in the country.

“It is also very much a broken building but, in spite of its brokenness, it symbolises a place where, through the love of Christ, a community can become whole. We hope that visitors will find in its peacefulness an inspiration for their spiritual journey and pilgrimage through life.”

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