Malmesbury Abbey

On our way home from Bourton-on-the-Water we had to pass through the village of Malmesbury.  Over our time in the UK we had often passed this way and seen the tourist sign to the Malmesbury Abbey and kept saying we would have to stop.  Well, we are now running out of time so stop we did with the added bonus of broadening Anna’s awareness of the history of her country!

Malmesbury Abbey is dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul and was one of the few English houses with a continual history from the 7^th century through to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  Malmesbury was founded as a Benedictine monastery around 676 by the scholar-poet Aldhelm, a nephew of King Ine of Wessex.  In 941AD, King Athelstan, who had died in Gloucester in October 939, was buried in the Abbey (more on him below).  

By the 11^th century Malmesbury Abbey contained the second largest library in Europe and was considered one of the leading European seats of learning. The Abbey was the site of an early attempt at human flight when, in 1010, the monk Eilmer of Malmesbury flew a primitive hang glider from a tower. Eilmer flew over 200 yards (200 m) before landing, breaking both legs.  He later remarked that the only reason he did not fly further was the lack of a tail on his glider.

The current Abbey was substantially completed by 1180.  The 431 feet (131 m) tall spire, and the tower it was built upon, collapsed in a storm around 1500 destroying much of the church, including two thirds of the nave and the transept.  The west tower fell around 1550, demolishing the three westernmost bays of the nave. As a result of these two collapses, less than half of the original building stands today.

The Abbey, which owned 23,000 acres (93 km²) in the twenty parishes that constituted Malmesbury Hundred, was closed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 by Henry VIII and was sold, with all its lands, to William Stumpe, a rich merchant.  He returned the abbey church to the town for continuing use as a parish church, and filled the abbey buildings with twenty looms for his cloth-weaving enterprise.  During the English Civil War, Malmesbury is said to have changed hands as many as seven times, and the abbey was fiercely fought over. Hundreds of pock-marks left by bullets and shot can still be seen on the south, west and east sides of Malmesbury Abbey walls.

Today much of the Abbey survives. The existing third of the nave has been restored as an active place of worship.  Supposedly the first person to be killed by a tiger in England, Hannah Twynnoy, is buried in the churchyard. She was an early-18th-century barmaid working in a local public house, killed on October 23, 1703.  (You may have seen her in a ‘Stupid Deaths’ segment of Horrible Histories.  Apparently the tiger, on display in a travelling show, did not like being poked!!)

The Abbey itself was a fascinating mix between the rack and ruin of time and the substantial building that still exists today.  It was a little odd, on entering, to see one side of it taken up with a small (religious) shop and a café but I guess they are happy to move with the times!

 Æthelstan or Athelstan (c. 893/895 – 27 October 939) was the King of England from 924 to 939.  He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn.  Æthelstan's success in securing the submission of Constantine II, King of Scots, at the Treaty of Eamont Bridge in 927 allowed him to claim the title of 'king of the English'.  Victory over Scottish and Viking forces at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 confirmed his prestige.  His reign has been overlooked and overshadowed by the achievements of his grandfather, Alfred the Great, but he is now regarded as one of the greatest kings of the West Saxon dynasty.   Æthelstan was the first king of a unified England from 927, and his reign was of fundamental importance to political developments in the 10^th century.  His household was the centre of English learning during his reign.

 The present stone vaulted roof replaced the original flat timber one in the 14^th century

 Manuscript written in 1129

 The Luce Window (1901)

 With our tour of the abbey complete, what better way to finish our afternoon than to stop for a pint at a place that claims to be the oldest hotel in England, The Old Bell Hotel (c.1220).  At that time Malmesbury Abbey was one of the foremost places of learning in England alongside Glastonbury and Canterbury.  This was due to the fact that King Athlestan married his four daughters to foreign kings thus amassing vast treasures and libraries.  The number of visiting scholars, coming to study the manuscripts, was so large that the Abbot built The Old Bell to provide shelter and food.

 We now felt we had broadened the world of Aunty Anna enough to head home and have an evening of pizzas and a movie.  We also initiated Anna into the game of Pucket, fun for the whole family!!

Anna stayed with us until late Sunday afternoon.  She and I spent Sunday morning wandering through the High Street of Corsham and taking in Corsham Park whilst the kids and Nathan enjoyed their first rugby training of the season.  All in all, it was a relaxing Sunday and it was great to be able to catch up with Anna before we next see her, at Christmas, in Canberra.