Priory Church of St Mary, Abergavenny

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Priory Church of St Mary, Abergavenny is a church in the centre of Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, Wales. St. Marys has been called 'the Westminster Abbey of Wales' because of its large size and the number of high status church monument tombs and the rare medieval effigies surviving within it. It was originally the church of the Benedictine Priory established under Hamelin de Balun the first Norman holder of the title Lord Abergavenny or later Baron Bergavenny in the 1090s. At this time it was a cell of the Abbey of Saint Vincent at Le Mans in France. Recent archaeological surveys have revealed significant finds of Roman Samian ware pottery, suggesting that the Church may have been on the site of a previous site of Romano-British and possibly Celtic worship. Henry de Abergavenny was a Prior here and later at Llandaff in the late 12th century and was chosen to assist at the Coronation of King John I of England in 1199.