Before the Norman Conquest of England, a small Saxon chapel dedicated to St Peter stood outside the east gate of Shrewsbury; it had been built by Siward, son of Ethelgar and a close relative of Edward the Confessor.

When Roger de Montgomery received Shropshire from William the Conqueror in 1071, he gave the church to one of his clerks, Odelerius of Orléans,[2][8] the father of the historian Orderic Vitalis, who is the main source for the foundation of the Abbey and probably an eye-witness.

Unde generositatem vestram, gloriose consul, fideliter admoneo ut, dum licet, in comitatu vestro (quem jure a patribus non consecutus es haereditario) monachile castrum contra Satanan construatur Deo; ubi pro anima vesita cucullati pugiles Behemoth conflictu resistent assiduo.

[12] I therefore offer to you, most noble earl, my faithful advice, that while it is in your power, you call a stronghold for monks against Satan to be built for the service of God in the chief seat of your earldom, which is not yours by inheritance from your ancestors, in order that these cowled combatants may withstand the devil in continual conflict for the good of your soul.

[13] On 25 February 1083 Earl Roger summoned his senior officials, including Warin, the Sheriff of Shropshire and Picot de Say, and publicly pledged himself to found a new Abbey, laying his gloves on the altar of St. Peter and granting the whole suburb outside the east gate for the construction.

[19] A notification lodged at Sées in 1086 by Robert of Bellême, Roger's son, who was later to become 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury, shows that they used the monks as witnesses in their property deals and custodians of the documents.

The abbey's modest but sufficient wealth was threatened, before many of the grants were confirmed by royal charter, when Earl Roger's son, Robert of Bellême, revolted against Henry I in 1102.

Note was taken that the abbey had exchanged Henry de Say's manor of Brompton,[40] south of Shrewsbury, for Siward's former estate of Cheney Longville in an attempt to improve management and economise by concentrating resources.

The newly appointed Bishop of Hereford, the ambitious royal administrator Richard de Capella, whose diocese included a large part of southern Shropshire, was specifically warned not to let the king hear of any complaints against himself in relation to the Abbey.

[43] In 1137/38[45] Robert of Shrewsbury, who was prior under the third and fourth abbots, Herbert and Ralph, negotiated and carried out the translation of the remains of St Winifred from Gwytherin in Wales.

Robert is generally accepted as responsible for strengthening the cult of Winifred, who had hitherto been an obscure Welsh saint, so that she became the focus of pilgrimages from Shrewsbury and other centres from the 14th century to the present.

[51] The Benedictine Rule was not austere in comparison with the discipline of the Cistercians and Augustinians, and Shrewsbury Abbey was markedly less isolated than its competitors, located as it was in the suburbs of a major town.

The great majority of the rural holdings were let to small farmers or cultivated as demesne lands; only rarely did the community let entire manors to laymen, and it was reluctant to tolerate leases of more than one lifetime.

In 1323-4 Bishop Roger Northburgh, recently appointed and at war with much of the ecclesiastical establishment in his diocese, instigated a series of canonical visitations that took in all of the abbeys and smaller houses around Shrewsbury.

[62] While criticisms were, in many cases, severe, Shrewsbury's shortcomings were fairly minor or very general: too many monks were missing meals in the refectory, novices were allowed out before they had properly learnt the Rule, and the accounts of the obedientiaries, the abbot's under-managers, were inadequate[63] – this last a complaint made of nearly all religious houses in the diocese.

In 1250, during the reign of Henry III, there was a major dispute over the succession in which the local candidate, the sacrist Adam, was rejected by the bishop, who appointed William the sub-prior of Coventry.

[72] Since the confiscation of Earl Robert's lands by the Crown, each Abbot of Shrewsbury was a tenant-in-chief, and with the summoning of Parliament in the reign of Henry III, compelled to attend.

Abbot Adam of Cleobury in 1344 traded the abbey's right to cut timber in the king's woods across the county, which was often hard to exploit because of poor communications, for 240 acres of nearby Lythwood,[121] although the exchange cost £100 at the time and an annual rent of £3.

A sketch of the great west window made in 1658 by Francis Sandford shows a selection of coats of arms that seem to suggest it was glazed around 1388,[124] in the time of Stevens, who may also have been responsible for some of the other 14th century alterations.

He was on good terms with the king, Richard II, who attributed his grant of a charter in 1389 not only to his own devotion to St Winifred, but also "the sincere affection we bear and have to Nicholas the abbot, and for his merits.

It was in the time of Stevens or Prestbury that John Mirk, Prior of Lilleshall, composed his sermon for St Winifred's day, part of his much-copied and later printed Festial.

[130] The chronicler Adam of Usk, after recording the death and burial of Owain Glyndŵr, noted that: "The king, with great reverence, went on foot in pilgrimage from Shrewsbury to St Winifred's well in North Wales.

[134] Two years earlier Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, had rebuilt the shrine at Holywell; William Caxton had printed a translation of Robert of Shrewsbury's life of Winifred.

Episcopal visitations from the time of Abbot Richard Baker complain of unpaid debts, poor accounting, buildings in decay and land leased without consulting the chapter.

The western part of the Abbey (nave, side aisles, porch and west tower) was preserved as a parish church and the remaining buildings were either re-used or demolished.

A late medieval reference in the records of the Diocese of Hereford calls it Vicaria altaris Sancte Crucis, ecclesia paochialis de Foriete Monachorum:[148] Vicarage of the altar of Holy Cross, parish church of the Monk's Foregate.

However, in 1797, legislation was passed to transfer the advowson to Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick of Attingham Park, in exchange for the patronage of some parishes he held in Suffolk.

[151] The vicarage was fairly generously endowed with land[152] and other income sources under an agreement made apparently by Abbot John Drayton in the 13th century.

Under the ultimately abortive proposals for a Presbyterian polity in Shropshire, dated 29 April 1647, Abbey Foregate parish was part of the county's first classis, along with most of the churches in Shrewsbury and the surrounding area.

When the restoration work of 1886-1894 was dedicated in May 1894, the then Vicar, Rev William Henry Draper, wrote a hymn to mark the occasion, "In Our Day of Thanksgiving" (titled "Remembrance of Past Worshippers").