The Dissolution Church

Interesting online lecture from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at English monastic and mendicant churches before and after the Dissolution in the late 1530s.

James Clark from the University of Exeter argued that the folk memory of ruined, abandoned churches post-Dissolution was not the general experience of many of them. Based on study of Cromwell’s Commissioners inventories and recent archaeological evidence he looked at how the churches were still being reconfigured, redecorated and commissioning new art works and furnishing right up to the date their monasteries were dissolved.

He then discussed how many of the churches were reused after with some like Canterbury and Westminster Abbeys becoming cathedrals whereas some become parish churches. Some Abbeys were also reoccupied after a hiatus such as Tewkesbury and St Albans.

The talk was enlivened with good illustrations and was an interesting contrast to various talks I have done recently on 16th century art on the continent.

 

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