White Ladies Priory - Building and Endowments

Building and Endowments

The church building was a simple cruciform, sandstone structure, with a nave of five bays, and a chancel of three bays. The transepts were small and without chapels. Today, the lay-out of the building is still easy to discern, although little remains of either transept, and only the north wall of the nave and chancel is fairly intact. There is a fine, round-headed Romanesque arch leading into the north transept, through which the residents would have passed to reach the cloister and the monastery. The windows on the north side are largely intact, making it easy to identify the bays of both nave and chancel. The south wall would have been windowed in the same way. It seems that the stone for the church was obtained locally - perhaps even in a field adjacent to the site, as one of the fish ponds seems to have been created from a quarry scoop.

The priory buildings are long-gone, and may have been timber-framed, but appear to have stood against the north wall of the church. Charles II commissioned a painting of the later house around 1670, and details of the painting suggest that it may have incorporated parts of the prioress' residence, which must have stood west of the main priory buildings and cloister.

The priory held many very small pieces of property, mostly donated by local families - sometimes probably as the dowries of canonesses on their admission to the community. Sometimes the gift would be fishing rights, a watermill or advowson of a parish, rather than land. By the Dissolution, there were lands, property or rights at Beckbury, Berrington, Chatwall (in Cardington), Donington, High Ercall, Humphreston (in Donington), Ingardine (in Stottesdon), Highley, Rudge, Haughton (probably in Shifnal), Sutton Maddock, and Tong, as well as Montford - all fairly local. There were also properties in Calverton, Nottinghamshire and Tibshelf, Derbyshire.