While on holiday in Shropshire a few weeks back, we were wandering on the outskirts of the exceptionally pretty village of Much Wenlock, a short distance from Wenlock Edge (nestling in the heart of the bosom country, etc. etc.) We hadn’t intended visiting the Priory, but a glimpse of its ruins – and my urgent need to micturate – persuaded us to pay The Man (actually some very nice ladies from English Heritage) and enter the grounds.
When it comes to the Physical World, I am a generalist – in other words, I have to make an effort to grasp specifics. My wife is the opposite: if we were to walk down the same lane or road for half a mile, she would be able to tell you at least twenty things she had spotted – a goldfinch, a dying oak tree, the last of the foxgloves, a rabbit half a mile away – while I’d be struggling to remember anything whatsoever about it. Similarly, when we visit ruins past a certain level of decay, they mean almost nothing to me, while my wife will automatically be figuring out where the kitchen used to be, where the pigs were kept, and, crucially, where they did their business.
I have to accept that, when it comes to imagining what used to be, I possess a deficient imagination: on my one and only visit to Rome, shamefully, the Forum left me absolutely cold – I tried to conjure up visions of sybaritic Romans cheering as lions munched Christians, but I just couldn’t manage it. It was just a pile of dead old stones.
It all depends on how much of the original structure is left. For instance, I cannot bear to watch any programme involving an archaeological dig (especially when presented by that Sultan of Self-Righteous Smuggery, Tony Robinson). But I’ll watch any programme on architecture, as long as it doesn’t involve me having to imagine how beautiful or imposing the building must once have been. There’s enough of Wenlock Priory remaining even for my mundane imagination to be able to immediately grasp what a stunningly beautiful place it must have been – mainly because it still is, despite the destruction wrought by the Dissolution of the Monasteries. (A Top Ten of British Vandals would undoubtedly include that fat, selfish, greedy brute Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and almost every town planner and architect operating between 1945 and the present – may they all rot in hell.)
If you want to know its history (first religious house on the site around 680 AD: St Milburge performed miracles there: monastery replaced in 1040 by the Earl of Mercia: after the Norman Conquest, monks were sent from Cluny to occupy it: richest priory in Shropshire: Henry VIII facilitated its destruction) a fuller account is available here - or you could just ask the wife).
What interested me was not its history, but the astonishing loveliness of its surprisingly well-preserved stonework, the tree-bedecked perfection of its surroundings, and the atmosphere of peace and calm that radiated from every corner. Wenlock Priory has had a tempestuous past, but, thanks to the faith, dedication and talent of those who built it, and the efforts of those who now so lovingly maintain it, it is an oasis of utter serenity – balm for the soul indeed.
(Thanks to to my son for allowing me to reproduce his excellent hotographs.)
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