The Normans
Following the Norman conquest, the castle at Tamworth and its lands were bestowed upon Sir Robert Marmion by William the Conqueror. These lands included the village of Polesworth and its Abbey. Over the 200 years since its foundation, the Abbey had prospered, thanks in part to generous gifts of land and property from friends and relatives of the nuns, most of whom had come from wealthy families.
Local legend has it, Robert Marmion seized the Abbey at Polesworth, casting the nuns out and evicting them from their lands. Some fifty years later, the new Lord of Tamworth Castle, another Robert Marmion, is reputed to have been visited in a dream by an apparition of the first Abbess of Polesworth, St Editha, who warned him that if he did not restore the nuns to their abbey he would suffer a painful death and eternal damnation. According to the legend, so frightened was the second Marmion by this dire warning that he restored the nuns to their former home that very night.
The facts are less dramatic. Around 1090, the nuns did indeed leave the Abbey to take up residence in the village of Oldbury (some six miles from Polesworth, near the modern day town of Nuneaton). They were to return in 1139 to a restored and much expanded Abbey. In light of recent doubts over the location of the original Abbey buildings, it is possbile that a new Abbey was built at a new site, which the present day church now occupies.
In either case, the nuns probably left simply to allow the extensive building works to take place and it is even possible that it was the Normans who instigated the work out of respect for the Order.
The new stone buildings included a larger Abbey church (parts of which survive today), a gatehouse (also still extant), an infirmary, forge, dormitories and a bakehouse. The Abbey undoubtedly already had gardens (both for vegetables and medicinal herbs) prior to the expansion, but these may also have been enlarged. It would have had a fishery and even a water mill (also used by the villagers) on the river.
The gatehouse was also used as the Abbey's school, which taught the children of noble families. The reputation of the school spread and was eventually known in both England and the Continent as the "English School".
The Abbey and its buildings were gifted to the nuns by the second Robert Marmion during the reign of Henry II (who came to the throne in 1154). Marmion also gave the Abbey lands at Waverton (Warton) and a church at Quinton.
There followed many prosperous and productive years for the Abbey. Many gifts were bestowed on the nuns, including lands and a mill at Kingsbury (four miles to the south of Polesworth), a second mill at Kettlebrook (now part of Tamworth) and churches at the villages of Ansley (near Nuneaton) and Barwell (close toHinckley, in Leicestershire). As the Abbey prospered, so did the village of Polesworth, with many local families working in and around the building's precincts.