History
LLanthony Secunda Priory, 1136 - 1538
The first Llanthony Priory, near Abergavenny in Wales, was seized by Welsh rebels in 1136. Llanthony Secunda (outside Gloucester) was founded in the same year to house the fugitive prior and about twenty canons. Miles of Gloucester supplied the land, which was attached to his Gloucester Castle. He led the civil war against King Stephen Miles and his descendants the Bohuns, hereditary Constables of England, were buried for ten generations in the priory church and chapter house. By 1150 the new priory had stately buildings in a landscape of gardens and vineyards. The Welsh site was restored after 1154, and the two communities separated in 1205, but they united again in 1481 when Llanthony Secunda bought out its Welsh namesake.
Llanthony House and Farm, 1540 - 1898
The Priory was dissolved in 1538. In 1540 the late prior's understeward Arthur Porter bought the priory and an estate of about four hundred and fifty acres (one hundred hectares). Porter became MP for Gloucester. The Porters, and their descendants the Scudamores, used it as a mansion house until the Siege of Gloucester in 1643, when it became part of the Royalist camp. After the siege only outbuildings remained standing. They became used as a farmstead and as stables for a surviving mansion at Newark, half a mile to the south. The priory continued to descend through the Scudamore, Howard and Higford families until it was sold in 1898. From 1794 canal, railway and industrial works gradually encroached the site. It was being used as a scrap-yard in 1974 - 1991, when Gloucester City Council bought five acres and began to conserve what remained. It passed to the Trust in 2007.
Priors and their guests
Clement of Llanthony was elected prior in 1150. He wrote a 'Harmony of the Gospels', which was popular throughout the middle ages. Later priors were known more for their hospitality. In the 1230s they accepted an obligation to serve 1,000 poor people (about a third of the town population) bread and wine, or bread, ale and pottage, twice a year - forever. King Henry III stayed at the priory in 1241, and King Edward II in 1327. Queen Eleanor, living at Gloucester castle (today the prison) in 1277 obtained permission to walk in the priory garden. John of Gaunt, eldest uncle of the boy king Richard II, made his headquarters at the priory during the Gloucester parliament of 1378; another uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, stayed in 1381 with 200 armed men.
Henry VII was staying at the priory in 1501 when he made the prior, Henry Dene, Archbishop of Canterbury. Prior Dene, a member of the King's Council, had ruled Ireland as Chancellor and Lord Deputy in 1494 - 1496. He had also built the present choir of Bangor Cathedral, where he was bishop in 1494 - 1500.
The Precinct
The priory was surrounded on three sides by a flood plain which was about three metres below modern ground level. The original precint covered about twenty hectares. It extended on the south of the Sudbrook (now culverted); on the west to a causeway near the Severn, where a fish-weir (for catching fish) called Cockayne was given in about 1150; on the north to the castle orchard - given in 1165 and now the site of the docks; and on the east to High Orchard, beside the Bristol Road. The precinct was walled, ditched and gated.
The Priory Church
The original church was built within sixteen months during 1136 - 1137. It has been rebuilt on a larger scale by 1275. It had four towers in 1300 when it was burned down and rebuilt again. The west towers appear in a contemporary sketch. It was again rebuilt, at sumptuous expense, in 1494 - 1513, and stood until 1643 with one tower and a lead roof; it then resembled the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral, with fan vaulting. Its site was destroyed about 1850 by abortive dock works and now lies within Gloucestershire College.
The Priory's possessions
By sixteenth century Llanthony Secunda was the sixth largest Augustinian house in England. The prior and twenty four canons were attended by about eighty lay servants. It was also the richest, owning ninety seven churches and fifty one well-appointed manors from Bedfordshire to Westmeath. The priors had seven residences in the neighbourhood, of which three still stand: Quedgeley Manor Farm, Brockworth Court and Prestbury Priory House. They built or rebuilt the nearby churches of Gloucester St Mary Magdalene, Gloucester St Mary de Crypt, Hempsted, Quedgeley, Elmore, Haresfield, Brockworth and Painswick.
