Priory Church Of St Mary

The Priory Church of St Mary stands in the centre of Usk, Monmouthshire, on ground once shared with a Benedictine nunnery founded in the twelfth century by Richard de Clare, second Earl of Pembroke. The present building began as a Norman church linked to Usk Castle, later enlarged for the nuns and then for the townspeople. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s it became the parish church, and was given Grade I listed status in 1974. The church’s architecture records centuries of change. In the thirteenth century a north aisle was added for the townsfolk, screened off from the nuns’ choir. Two Perpendicular porches were added in the fifteenth century, probably by Sir William Herbert, who was also working at nearby Raglan Castle. Nineteenth-century restorations by Thomas Henry Wyatt and G E Halliday created the present crossing and nave roof. Visitors enter through the old priory gatehouse at the churchyard entrance. Inside, the crossing space beneath the tower is now a sanctuary, and the nave holds a fine Gray and Davison organ of 1861 originally built for Llandaff Cathedral. The organ was moved here in 1900 as a memorial to Hely Bennet Rickards.