Exhibition: Merton Priory is 900 years old

An exhibition at the Museum of Wimbledon which celebrates 900 years of the history of Merton Priory.

This undeservedly unknown national treasure exists today in only some fragments but its story embraces important events and important people – many of them Kings. And also a Pope and a Saint.

Merton Priory was the place where in 1236, twenty years after Magna Carta, Parliament met to prepare the written parliamentary law in the form of the eleven chapters of the first Statute of Merton, which
remained on the Statute Book for over 700 years.

The only English Pope, Adrian IV, and Saint Thomas Becket were educated there. King John stayed there often.

Henry III maintained lodgings there and throughout his reign many charters were attested at Merton. Merton Priory also saw the death of the son of Edward I in 1274, a Privy Council of Henry IV in 1412,
Henry VI crowned (for the second time) in 1437 on his sixteenth birthday, and a visit from Henry VII’s daughter Mary in 1533.

The exhibitions chronicles these and many other events together with a display by the Merton Priory Trust of plans for the extensions to the Chapter House Museum which are being funded by the National
Lottery.

Other contributors to the exhibition are the Museum of London with a display covering their extensive, comparatively recent digs and the Merton Historical Society showing a variety of historically important documents plus work done by Richard Chellew on the Statute of Merton and other documents.

There is also a look at some of the beautiful churches of Augustinian Priories that escaped destruction by Henry VIII and exist today.