Here you’ll discover more about the fascinating history of the Priory building and its patron saints…
Building work started in 1085…
according to the Worcester Monastic Annals
Not long after the time of the Battle of Hastings St Wulstan, the Bishop of Worcester, encouraged a monk, called Aldwin, in the work of founding a monastery in what was then Malvern Chase (a forested area reserved for hunting).
The Priory was built for 30 monks and was much smaller than it is now.
The areas coloured yellow in the plan are part of the original building, itself part of a much larger complex of monastic buildings.
The photo below shows the Norman Romanesque style pillars and arches dating from this time.
The land on which the Priory was built was in the Manor of Powick, which stretched up to the foothills of the Malvern Hills. This had been given by Edward the Confessor to his new foundation of Westminster Abbey. With the building of the Priory, Westminster saw the opportunity to have some representation on its distant area of land, and following negotiations between the Abbot of Westminster and the Prior of Malvern it was agreed that Malvern Priory would become a cell of Westminster Abbey. Such an arrangement suited the Priory very well. On the one hand, Westminster was sufficiently remote that it couldn’t interfere with the day to day running of the Priory, and on the other, if the Bishop of Worcester tried to impose his will on the Priory, the Abbot of Westminster was a powerful ally to have against him.
Several such ecclesiastical altercations over who had control of the Priory occurred over the years, with one notable battle in the late 13th century escalating to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King, and eventually the Pope!
The photo (left) shows one bay of a two bay sunken chantry on the north side of St Anne`s chapel in the Priory. It contains two stone coffin lids, one of which records an epitaph to Walcher, the second Prior of the monastery who died in 1135. He came from Lotharingia and was a notable astronomer and mathematician. He is credited with having brought the use of the astrolabe to this country (long used in Islamic cultures) and his translation of Islamic astronomical works into Latin introduced Arabic mathematical figures and measurements into England, eventually leading to the use of Arabic numbers instead of Roman numerals.
Monks and misericords - Malvern’s mediaeval roots from Visit the Malverns on Vimeo
1430 - 1500
In the 15th century, the Priory church was extended…
and rebuilt in the perpendicular style with large windows. The tower was reconstructed (styled on Gloucester cathedral), the presbytery, choir and choir aisles were rebuilt and the north aisle was widened. Locally made tiles were put on the floors and some of the walls, and the windows were filled with stained glass. More monks’ stalls (misericords), depicting the labours of the months of the year, were installed.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, (later Richard III) and Henry VII both donated glass for two large stained glass windows at the west end and in the north transept.
The new shape of the Priory is indicated by the blue colours on the plan. Widening of the south aisle was prevented by the adjacent cloisters.
1539 and Henry VIII
During the 1530s King Henry VIII needed money…
and since the monasteries belonged to someone else - the Pope - he decided to plunder them. All opposition was brushed aside by Thomas Cromwell, and in 1539 the Malvern monks surrendered their lands and buildings.
The Prior’s house, Priory gatehouse (now Malvern’s museum) and the Guesten Hall were allowed to stand and were sold. The Chapter House, Refectory and Dormitory were sold and demolished. The Lady Chapel (which extended out from the east end) and the south transept were torn down and the lead was stripped from the roof of the main building. The rest of the church was only to remain standing until the Crown could find a buyer looking for a cheap source of building material.
The Priory church was saved by the people of Malvern. Standing where the main Malvern Post Office stands now, their own 13th century parish church was in a state of disrepair. The parishioners, led by John Pope, petitioned the Crown and succeeded in buying the Priory for £20, to be paid in two annual instalments of £10. The parish consisted of only 105 families. After they had bought the church they had no money left to spend on the building. A chalice from the old parish church was sold to raise some funds for essential repairs; there were large holes in walls where structures had been torn down. Subsequently they struggled with its upkeep.
To the right of the altar in the present day Priory there is a tomb monument to John Knotsford (d 1589) and his wife. Knotsford was a Sergeant at Arms to Henry VIII and bought the Prior’s house and associated land six years after the dissolution of the monastery. One of his five daughters, Anne Savage, gave the monument. She is depicted kneeling in prayer at the feet of her parents.
1600 - 1800
Lack of money continued to be a problem…
over the next couple of centuries. This meant that barely any repairs or maintenance were carried out during this time. Fortunately this also meant that there was no money to remove the 'Popish' mediaeval stained glass.
Although the Civil War raged in nearby Worcester, Malvern was still a remote part of the English countryside surrounded by the dense forest of Malvern Chase.
By the latter half of the 18th century the whole building had fallen into a terrible state of disrepair. It was damp and parts of it flooded, windows were deteriorating because of weakening of the leadwork and many were smashed as a consequence of storms and vandalism.
A huge ivy had grown up against the great east window, through it, and into the church. Plaster was falling off the walls and there was even a pigeon loft in the north transept.
Etching of the Priory in 1782
1800 to 1860
The growing popularity of the water cure in Malvern…
brought both people and money to the town. At the beginning of the 19th century attempts to renovate the Priory began. The walls were cleaned and whitewashed and windows repaired. Unfortunately the local glaziers pieced together fragments of glass from various windows in wild confusion.
Serious fundraising for restoration of the church began in earnest with the arrival of the Rev Dr Henry Card in 1815. He not only persuaded the local gentry to contribute funds but also Princess Charlotte, her husband Prince Leopold, and William IV and his wife Queen Adelaide. Initially the fabric of the building was rather ignored in favour of internal alterations and embellishments (many of which were removed 50 years later), but eventually some repairs were made to the external masonry and roof as well.
1860 Restoration and Repair
The main restoration of the Priory in the 19th century was in 1860…
under the direction of Sir George Gilbert Scott, at a cost of £11,000.
The internal masonry was scraped and cleaned, transept gallery pews were removed, the wooden ceiling of the nave was repaired and restored, wooden ceilings were provided for the nave aisles and north transept, the canopied triple decker pulpit was replaced, the old box pews were changed for rush seats and the mediaeval floor tiles were lifted, relocated on walls and replaced with Victorian Minton copies
Nave roof looking west
Victorian Minton tiles in the central aisle
1880 to 1919
Three new stained glass windows…
were installed to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897.
The north porch was rebuilt in 1894, retaining the elaborate mediaeval stone fretwork canopy over the central statue recess above the entrance.
Between 1910 and 1919 a considerable amount of re-leading and reorganisation of the mediaeval stained glass was carried out.
Queen Victoria portrayed in stained glass on the north aisle
1939-45 World War II
During World War II the mediaeval stained glass…
was removed and stored in zinc-lined boxes as a precaution against bomb damage.
After the war Dr Louis Hamand, the organist, supervised the painstaking work of replacing the windows in their original positions as far as was possible. Re-installation took seven months.
The east window boarded up after the removal of glass during the Second World War
Contemporary restoration
The never-ending repair and preservation of the church fabric…
has continued throughout the 20th, and now the 21st, centuries.
To mark the start of the new millennium, two new stained glass windows were installed in the north choir aisle. These were designed and executed by Thomas Denny and were given by The Friends of Malvern Priory.
In 2019, the southwest buttress and the stonework on the external aspect of the west wall have been rebuilt, and the north porch has been cleaned and repaired.
2022 saw the start of works to replace the roof of St Anne’s chapel, removal of the mediaeval Creation window for conservation and repair of the stonework around the window (see the blog for the latest updates).
We are very grateful to donors from around the world and to those who support the Priory through Legacies.
If you would like to be part of the nearly 1,000 year history of this unique place, please click the button below.
Scaffolding to enable replacement of St Anne’s Chapel roof.
Environmental Protection Glass inserted to protect the mediaeval glass of the Creation Window after conservation by York Glaziers Trust. 19 April 2023
Patron Saints of the Priory:
St Mary and St Michael
A Charter from Henry 1st in 1128 AD refers to Great Malvern Priory as 'the Priory of St Mary'
In 1154/6 Westminster Abbey obtained a 'bull' from Pope Adrian IV which confirms a strong relationship or dependency of the Priory of St Mary, Malvern, on the Abbey of Westminster.
The Worcester Monastic Annals and the 'Vita Wulfstani', a biography of the life of St Wulfstan by his chaplain in 1110 (translated from the Anglo Saxon by William of Malmesbury, 1125) tell how St Wulstan Bishop of Worcester encouraged a hermit named Aldwin to found a Monastery in the wilderness of Malvern. It is a remarkable fact that St Wulfstan kept his bishopric despite King William (the conqueror) replacing almost every English bishop with a Norman.
Western Christendom was Roman Catholic until the 16th century and the Virgin Mary has always been held in highest esteem in Roman thinking, theology, and devotion. Therefore, many monasteries and churches took the Virgin as their patron saint. Malvern Priory was directly founded on the initiative of Bishop Wulstan of the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Worcester.
An 18th century document in the Worcester County Record Office states that in the 18th year of William's kingship (possibly 1083), the Priory was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. There is no mention in this of the Archangel Michael.
The Victoria County History gives an account of the Priory’s foundation, from Bishop Guilford's Register of 1283. It describes how hermit Aldwyn, who lived in the reign of Edward the Confessor, had petitioned the Earl of Gloucester for the original site [of the Priory] in the wood, and land ‘as far as Baldeyate’; that he collected monks, and adopted the Rule of St Benedict; dedicating the monastery to the Virgin Mary - but occasionally under patronage of both St Mary & St Michael. This information, it states, is taken from the 'Gervase of Canterbury, Mappa Mundi (Rolls ser.)'
In his book, ‘The Priory of Gt. Malvern’, early 19th century Priory vicar, The Revd. H. Card, writes that the monastery ‘was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and also to St. Michael - as we learn from an original charter in the British Museum’.
It is very difficult, in the early mediaeval world of mists and of myths, to distinguish historical facts from fables. The 15th century monks' tale of a St Werstan fathering the Priory (rather than Wulfstan and Aldwyn), is depicted in the north choir clerestory windows in the Priory. The site of Werstan's supposed martyrdom was 'at the chapel of St John', above the Priory.
It is likely that the hillside chapel was in fact dedicated to St. Michael not St. John. It was fairly common practice for hillside churches to designate the Archangel Michael as their patron saint. Michael means 'Who is like God ?' Whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, it is Michael who may be sent.
After the dissolution and destruction of the Priory buildings, from 1539, Richard, Robert and Roger Taverner, in 1544, are reported as buying "Saint Myghelles chapel, with its garden, beneath le Malvern Hyll".
Although soon destroyed, this chapel was still remembered in the 18th century, when it was pictured in the west window of the surviving Priory transept, as well as in the background of early prints of the 'Abbey' Gateway.
In 1725 it is marked on a drawing by Worcester mapmaker Joseph Dougharty. In 1744 it is marked on a map as 'St Michael's Hermitage', and from remains found in a cottage named ‘The Hermitage’, it came to be identified with the site of ‘Bello Squardo’, at the top of the ‘99’ steps to St Anne’s Well above present day Malvern.
Malvern village's Parish church, dedicated to St Thomas, was a tumble-down wooden building (on the site of the present Post Office) before local folk raised £20 to buy the monks' church. Perhaps the early destruction of the chapel of St Michael led to the linking of St Michael to St Mary, if that linkage was not already there.
When John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester, visited on July 30th 1460 to dedicate the rebuilt Priory church and some seven altars, he referred, at the High Altar, to the patrons as ‘the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Michael the Archangel’, together with St John the Evangelist, St Peter, St Paul, and also St Benedict, founder of the Order.
Today the Priory is known as the Parish Church of St Mary and St Michael, or to the people of Malvern, just ‘Malvern Priory’.
A mediaeval tile in the Priory with a reflected letter ‘M’, believed to represent the dual patronage of Saints Mary and Michael