Alberbury Priory

Alberbury Priory was the smallest of three English dependencies of the abbey of Grandmont in France, and the last to be founded. Fulk Fitz Warin originally intended to erect a house of Arrouaisian canons and he began to build a priory between 1221 and 1226. He invited Alan, Abbot of Lilleshall, to establish a full convent there but the provision he made was inadequate to support them.

The next abbot, William, declared that the charge was too difficult and renounced all claims in the priory. Fulk, influenced perhaps by the recent Grandmontine foundation at Craswall in Herefordshire by Walter de Lacy, then turned to the Order of Grandmont and before 1232 placed the house directly under the authority of the abbey of Grandmont in Limousin.

The foundation charter granted the brethren the site of the priory with its accessories, land, and common rights in Alberbury and Pecknall, a fishery in the Severn, the right to construct mills, and the manor of Whadborough in Leicestershire. The charter was confirmed by King Henry III in 1232. The dedication was in honour of St. Mary, and the priory was known during the Middle Ages as the 'New Abbey', or the 'Black Abbey' from the colour of the habit worn by the brethren of the prior. Confusingly, it is sometimes called the ‘White Abbey’ because of the colour of its stone.

The founder of the order, St. Stephen of Muret had laid down strict rules of poverty for his brethren and insisted on the denial of possession of many forms of property, but by the time that Alberbury was founded some of the stricter observances of the order had been relaxed. In 1223 the pope allowed the brethren to hold land outside the sites of their houses, to breed animals, attend markets and fairs, and receive charters giving them legal security.

All three of the English dependencies of Grandmont were administered for the benefit of the mother house in France.

The site, which occupied about four acres, lay within a bend of the River Severn about 1¼ miles north-east of Alberbury village. An Elizabethan plan shows the precincts entirely surrounded by a moat and a partly moated inner enclosure, each enclosure having a gatehouse; to the south-east was a mill supplied by a small tributary of the Severn. Parts of the moats and the site of the mill pool are still visible. The only surviving buildings are incorporated in the farm-house at White Abbey Farm. They consist of part of the church with St. Stephen's chapel adjoining it, both dating from the early 13th century. Excavations in 1925 established further details of the layout. The church, unlike the normal Grandmontine churches, was square ended and was never vaulted in stone, an indication that it may have been built at the time of the foundation for the canons of Lilleshall and that the parish church of Alberbury was never used by the brethren. The church was a simple rectangle about 109 feet by 22 feet, with the cloister to the south of it. The southern half of White Abbey Farm consists of the central portion of the church which originally projected further east and west. In the south wall a doorway to the cloister, with a pointed arch and foliated capitals to the former jamb-shafts, survives. Further east is the rear arch of the doorway to the sacristy in the east range of the cloister and traces of the springing of the sacristy vault.