The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

Cirencester in Gloucestershire is the setting in 1395 for Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  This ancient town, founded by the Romans, was known as Corinium.  It grew to the second largest Roman town after London and is now usually thought to have been the capital of Britannia Prima.  The Corinium Museum in present-day Cirencester houses a wonderful collection from the Roman period.  The ruins of the Roman amphitheatre are just outside the medieval town and are one setting for action in my story.  The importance of Cirencester for wool goes back to Roman times and continued through the medieval period.

By the early 12^th century, Cirencester Abbey, which had an Augustinian foundation, was granted the royal manor associated with Cirencester.  It grew to become the largest Augustinian monastery in England and always enjoyed a favoured position in the town with the monarchy.  This led to much stress between the abbey and the town over the centuries, and I have used some of that tension in my story.  Very little survives from the abbey after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539.  Today the abbey grounds are almost devoid of buildings.  There is a Norman Gate to the abbey grounds, and the fishpond survives.  Stones laid flush to the ground show the footprint of the great church that once stood here.  Part of the footprint of the nave of the church is pictured below.

The most important medieval building to survive is the parish church of Cirencester, next to the abbey grounds, but it was enlarged shortly after the time of my novel.  Other medieval remains include the ruins of a hospital just north of the abbey and a few of the abbey buildings which are outside of the town limits.

Most of the streets within the Roman precincts did not survive.  Those laid out in the Saxon period have come down through medieval times to the present.  I have used Dyer Street as the location for the residence of my heroine in this story.

Tags: Chaucer's England, historical fiction, medieval mysteries

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