Pershore Abbey

Pershore Abbey, the Abbey Church of Holy Cross with Saint Edburgha, is a Grade I former Benedictine church on Church Walk, Pershore, Worcestershire, now the parish church in the Diocese of Worcester.

Overview

Historic England records an abbey founded in the seventh century; the present building is eleventh to thirteenth century with later medieval remodelling, seventeenth-century buttressing after the Dissolution, a major restoration in the 1860s by Giles Gilbert Scott, and further early twentieth-century work. The fabric is mainly limestone ashlar with parapeted plain-tile, stone-tile and lead roofs. The surviving plan is an apse, chancel with choir aisles, north and south transepts and a crossing tower; the nave was demolished at the Dissolution.

The south transept is mostly Romanesque, with chevron-moulded blind arcading to the gable. The four-stage crossing tower was completed in 1330. The chancel was rebuilt after a fire in 1223 and has a combined triforium and clerestory and tierceron vaults. Scott’s nineteenth-century apse stands on the site of the former Lady Chapel. The listing records a Romanesque font, medieval monuments in the south transept, and stained glass by Clayton and Bell, Hardman and Company, and Kempe.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1387027
• British Listed Buildings: Abbey Church of Holy Cross
• Wikipedia: Pershore Abbey