Pill Priory

Description

Pill Priory is a Tironian house founded near Milford Haven in the late 12th century. It was founded as a daughter house of St Dogmaels Abbey near Cardigan, itself a priory of the Tironensian order of reformed Benedictine monks.

The community may always have been small; it was recorded as five monks in 1534 and four in 1536. In 1536 St Dogmaels Abbey and its daughters at Pill and Caldey were dissolved in the suppression of those monastic houses and fell to the crown.

The entire site remains in private hands. The free-standing remains of the priory church's chancel arch is now the most striking element of the site, and forms a garden feature, together with the remains of the south transept. The Pill Priory Cottage living quarters contain elements from the conventual buildings which were arranged around a more-or-less formalised cloister. The remains of all are constructed from Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous Limestone, both from local sources.