HFF everyone!

Malmesbury Abbey ~ This building is the third abbey to stand on this site. The first was St Aldhelm’s earliest church, before he oversaw the construction of a larger, stone complex of churches located where the current graveyard lies. The present Abbey dates from 1180, and was added to in the following 200 years with a great spire that was the tallest building in England at the time, and a tower at the West End. But in the late 15th century – a generation before Henry VIII’s cull of the monasteries – the great spire fell, followed by the tower 100 years later. Only the nave of this once huge abbey remains.


A visitor to Malmesbury Abbey will see the tomb of King Athelstan, a 15th Century illuminated Bible, the crest of Henry VII, a breathtaking Norman porch which illustrates the Christian salvation history, and the poetic gravestone of Hannah Twynnoy, killed by a tiger, locally, in 1703.

Hannah Twynnoy was a barmaid working at a pub called the White Lion in Malmesbury in 1703 when a menagerie arrived to set up in the pub's large rear yard. Among the animals there was included a tiger, which Hannah was warned against upsetting. She liked bothering the animal until one day it got tired of it and mauled her. Hannah did not survive!