Breedon on the Hill - Breedon Priory

An Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded in about 675 on the site of an Iron Age hill fort known as the Bulwarks. Consent was given by King Æthelred of Mercia. The land was given by the princeps Frithuric with the stipulation that Hædda would be made the abbot. Medieval manuscripts record four saints buried in Breedon on the Hill, one of them was Frithuric. Danish raiders who sailed up the river Trent destroyed the monastery at the end of the 9th century.

By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 most of these lands were no longer held by the monastery and the manors surrounding Breedon had been given by William the Conqueror to the de Ferrers family, who later became the Earls of Derby.

Breedon priory was founded as an Augustinian house in around 1120. The priory was a cell of Nostell Priory in Yorkshire. Gervase, a prior of Breedon, attempted to gain independence for the priory from Nostell, but failed and subsequently resigned in 1244.

In 1441 a visiting bishop found the monastery to be dilapidated and in debt. By 1535 there was no resident community at the priory, which was now occupied only by the prior. The priory was surrendered for dissolution in 1539.

The church contains important relief sculptures, some of which may be among the earliest surviving in England. These carvings come from the original Saxon abbey church. Most of the carvings are dated to the 9th century.
There must have been a long frieze in the preexisting church. Some parts are here now.