Jeremy Williamson (Llanthony Priory)

Jeremy Williamson, chair of the Llanthony Secunda Priory Trust, presented to the Club the history and work of the Priory and Trust.  Like a number of people in the Club I was not born and bred in Gloucestershire so it is always interesting to hear about the history of the city and county we have chosen to call home.  Jeremy did not disappoint giving us and interesting and informative insight into the history of the oldest religious house in Gloucester.

Llanthony Priory was established in 1136 as the daughter priory to the mother priory, Llanthony Prima, in the Honddu valley in the Black mountains.  The second priory in Gloucester (secunda) was established to allow the monks to escape the issues and challenges they were experiencing with the Welsh following the death of Henry I.  The Priory pre-dates The Cathedral, St Oswald’s Priory, The Blackfriars, The Greyfriars, and St. Margaret and St Mary Magdalene by some 100 years.

Through successive Royal patronage the Priory flourished becoming financially richer than the mother priory and in 1205 Llanthony Secuda, Gloucester, broke away from the mother priory in Wales.  Just prior to the Dissolution of Monasteries under Henry VIII in 1538 the priory had become one of the richest Augustinian monasteries in England.  The nephew of the last prior of Llanthony Secunda collected some 800 of England’s most important and valuable manuscripts.  Following his death these documents were spread across the country.  Most of the remaining items now reside in the British Museum.  Unfortunately, the Priory did not benefit from the value of these documents.

The Priory did not fare well in recent history.  In the 18^th and 19^th centuries the site was ravaged, first by the Gloucester and Berkley Canal and then by Great Western Railway.  The site reach a low point in the 1960s and 70s becoming a scrap yard covered in spoil and caravans before Gloucester City Council acquired the site in the 1980s.  The Llanthony Secunda Priory Trust was set up in 2007 to restore and maintain the few remaining buildings on the site and the green space surrounding them. 

In 2013 the Trust was successful with their bid to secure a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £3.1 for the "Re-formation" Project, which will deliver a programme of restoration, conservation and community engagement.  The Club wished them every success in preserving this important part of the history of our great city.

David Threlfall