After Dissolution
By 1828 the former friary church had fallen into serious disrepair and the town council decided to demolish it. The buildings were blown up, the ground levelled and the site in the town centre redeveloped with houses and shops: some buildings used parts of the old friary walls as foundations. The churchyard containing thousands of common and noble graves was cleared and the most recently buried bodies transferred to a cemetery a few streets away. The altarpiece however was preserved and is now located in Thurø Church.
Recent excavations by Svendborg Museum have revealed that the later friary complex was much larger than was previously thought, and contained many structures in addtition to the old rectangular layout.
Read more about this topic: Svendborg Friary
Famous quotes containing the word dissolution:
“The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical.”
—Eugenio Montale (1896–1981)
“From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)