Malmesbury Abbey
— — the broken nave where England's first king sleeps.
Not only on a wall.
“A part-ruined Norman abbey on a hill above the Avon in north Wiltshire, founded around 676 by the scholar-monk Aldhelm. The crossing tower fell about 1500 and the western tower a century later; what remains of the nave still serves as the parish church. King Athelstan, the first king of a unified England, was buried here in 939. In 1010 a monk named Eilmer tried to fly from the tower with strapped-on wings and broke both legs.
Malmesbury Abbey, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Malmesbury Abbey stands on a hill above the River Avon in the small market town of Malmesbury in north Wiltshire, England. The first monastery on the site was founded around 676 by Aldhelm, a Wessex scholar later made first Bishop of Sherborne. The present Norman building was begun about 1145 and dedicated in the late twelfth century. The crossing tower collapsed around 1500 and the western tower about a hundred years later, reducing the building to roughly a third of its medieval length. The surviving nave is still in use as the parish church.
The abbey's south porch dates from the mid-twelfth century and holds one of the finest sets of Romanesque sculpture in England: six concentric carved arches over a tympanum showing Christ in Majesty flanked by angels, with figures of the Apostles inside the porch. The stone is local oolitic limestone, weathered but still legible after eight centuries. A wall-tomb in the north aisle marks King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great and the first king of a unified England, who died in 939.
Around 1010 a monk named Eilmer of Malmesbury strapped wings to his arms and feet, leapt from a tower of the abbey, and glided what the chronicler William of Malmesbury later recorded as more than a furlong before crashing and breaking both legs. William himself, the great Anglo-Norman historian, was librarian and monk of the abbey through the early twelfth century and wrote most of his major works here. His Gesta Regum Anglorum remains one of the principal sources for the period.