White Ladies Priory - After Dissolution

After Dissolution

The reversion was sold to William Whorwood, the Attorney General in 1540, which made him the effective owner, but Skeffington retained the lease. It was almost certainly he who built a house on the site, probably incorporating some of the prioress's residence. When he died in 1550, it will have passed to his wife, Joan, who subsequently married Edward Giffard, son of Thomas Giffard (died 1560) of Chillington. It is unclear whether Skeffington or Joan or Giffard paid off the Whorwoods, but the property certainly became part of the Giffard family's estates. After Edward, White Ladies passed to his son, John, who extended the old farm buildings north of the priory site to create Boscobel House about 1630. In 1651, it belonged to John Giffard's daughter, Frances Cotton, at that time a widow. The Giffards were Catholics and the most important Recusants in the area. They were strong supporters of the royalist cause in the English Civil War. Their servants too were all Catholic.

White Ladies was not occupied by Frances Cotton during the escape of Charles II. It was being run by housekeepers and servants. Among the tenants of the estate were five brothers called Penderell. (There had been six but one was killed at the Battle of Edgehill.) The Penderell family were small farmers but the sons seem to have worked part of their time as woodmen, farm servants and retainers of the Giffard family, living at different places in the neighborhood and caring for some houses such as White Ladies Priory and Boscobel House, which is about a mile away.

Charles Giffard, a cousin of Frances, escorted King Charles to White Ladies Priory early on 4 September 1651, after riding through the night after the previous day's battle. They were admitted by George Penderell, a servant of the house, who sent for Richard Penderell, who lived in a farm house nearby, and for their elder brother William, who was at Boscobel. After failing to cross the River Severn, Charles returned to the estate on 6 September and spent the day in the grounds of Boscobel House hiding in the famous Royal Oak.

Frances Cotton, née Giffard, died shortly after these events, and both White Ladies and Boscobel passed via her daughter, Jane Cotton, who had married Basil Fitzherbert in 1648, to the Fitzherbert family of Norbury Hall, Derbyshire. The house was demolished some time in the 18th century. The estate and Boscobel were sold to Walter Evans, a Derbyshire industrialist, in 1812, but the Fitzherbert family retained the White Ladies site. In 1884, the head of the Fitzherbert family became Lord Stafford, and in 1938 Edward Fitzherbert, 13th Baron Stafford placed White Ladies in the care of the Office of Works, a government department.

Whilst the priory is now gone, the remains of its medieval church and the 19th century boundary wall of the small graveyard still remain and are currently under the care of English Heritage. The graveyard was used by Catholic families until 1844, when St. Mary's church at Brewood was consecrated.