Woodhouse friary, Shropshire

Woodhouse, only a couple of miles northwest of Cleobury Mortimer, was the site of one of the two earliest English hermitages of St Augustine. It was from Tuscany that a group of Augustinian hermits came to England in 1249, and without a doubt some of these would have formed the community at Woodhouse, of which certainly contained a settlement by 1250.
The location at Woodhouse was ideal for the Austin Friars, due to the site being remote and uncultivated, which fits perfectly with the order’s early ideals of living life in poverty and in absolute servitude to God.
The community at the friary in Woodhouse was always small with an estimated number of only seven friars in the late thirteenth century.
By the time of the dissolution in 1536, the estate comprised about 50 acres, mostly woodland and pasture. During the dissolution, the prior of Woodhouse sold the properties in the house in an effort to save them from being confiscated. The friary was finally suppressed in the August of 1538.