Description
This watercolour derives from Turner’s tour of Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Monmouthshire in the summer of 1793. Interestingly, Turner used the same composition some thirty years later for an image commissioned by the print publisher Charles Heath for the engraved series Picturesque Views in England and Wales. The building of Great Malvern Priory began in 1085, on land that belonged to Westminster Abbey that was under the control of the crown at that time. The Priory Gatehouse, built much later in 1480, functioned as the principal entrance to the Priory. Today, these buildings are the only remaining monastic buildings in Malvern. During the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, the Priory suffered much destruction. In 1539, when the Malvern monks surrendered their land and buildings, parts of the Priory were sold; one man paid a pound for the Lady Chapel and demolished it, probably to reuse the building stone. The cloisters and the South transept were pulled down and the lead removed from the roofs. Eventually, the Priory church was saved by the parishioners of Malvern who petitioned King Henry VIII and succeeded in buying the Priory for £20. It took them two years to raise the money. However, the parish consisted of only one hundred and five families and, after they had bought the church, they had no money left to carry out repairs. Lack of money continued to be a problem over the next couple of centuries, which meant that hardly any repairs or maintenance were carried out over this period of time. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the building’s renovation neared completion. Thus, when Turner produced this watercolour, the Priory was still in a relatively dilapidated state. In the foreground, two men can be seen cutting large timbers with a crosscut saw, working during the early stages of the building’s restoration.
Image Licence
All Rights Reserved
Image Credit
©The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Location
Great Malvern Priory, Worcestershire, England
Country
England
Tags
Category
Buildings & Architecture
