The ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Buildwas are sited on the S bank of the River Severn, in a wooded landscape between the Wrekin to the N and the Shropshire Hills to the S. In terms of modern settlement it is 10 miles SE of Shrewsbury. The abbey precinct may have covered up to 34 acres (Robinson 2002), and was bounded to the N by the Severn. What remains today is the abbey church and the claustral buildings to N of it. Of these the buildings of the E range are the best preserved, although the W range is represented by low walls. Outside the main hub to the NE stand the remains of the Infirmary and the Abbot's Lodging.

This report is concerned only with the cloister buildings; the church is recorded in a separate entry.

The cloister is on the N side of the abbey church. The cloister arcade is entirely lost, although the foundations of the stylobate on which it stood is visible on the ground. Of the 4 original ranges, the S was occupied by the lost S nave aisle of the church; the W by the lay brothers' dormitory above an undercroft, surviving only as an outline; and the N by the refectory, of which practically nothing survives. Fortunately the important buildings of the E range still stand. At the N end is the Parlour, a rib-vaulted chamber with an elaborate doorway at the W, from the cloister, and another at the E end, allowing it to serve as a passage. Next comes the chapter house, with the standard arrangement of a doorway flanked by windows onto the cloister alley. The interior is rib-vaulted in 9 bays. To the S of the chapter house, the next doorway gives access to a 2-bay vaulted chamber connected by a flight of steps to the N transept of the church. This was probably the book room and sacristy, used for storing volumes, vestments and liturgical vessels. (Robinson (2002)). The southernmost doorway leads to an undercroft or crypt under the N transept. The Day Room stood at the N end of the E range, outside the square of the cloister. Unusually its E end terminated in a 3-bay arcade, here illustrated but not described as a separate feature.

The Abbey was founded in 1135 by Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield for the order of Savigny. From the start the dedication was the same as that of Lichfield Cathedral, to St Mary and St Chad. In 1147 Buildwas became a Cistercian house when the Savignac order was merged with that of the Cistercians. The Abbey was dissolved in 1536, and in the following year the site was granted to Sir Edward Grey, Lord Powis, who settled the estate on his illegitimate son, also named Edward. He converted the buildings to the NE of the cloister into a grand residence, which was to be sold to Sir William Acton, along with the entire Buildwas estate, in 1648. It passed to Walter Moseley later in the century and remained in that family into the 20thc. In 1925 the now dilapidated buildings were placed in the guardianship of the Office of Works. The house remained in private ownership, while the church and cloister areas passed to the care of English Heritage in 1984.

Much of the cloister sculpture is badly eroded, and despite the expense of labour there is little here to excite lovers of the more grotesque and whimsical strands of Romanesque sculpture. Most of the capitals are variants of scallop and volute forms. The trefoil scallops in the chapter house and parlour vaults are of a kind first seen at Reading Abbey, in the cloister, and it is interesting to note that the vault rib profiles in these two locations also match ribs from Reading Abbey, re-used in the Holy Brook covering. There are comparisons to be made with Lilleshall Abbey too. The Parlour entrance, in particular the lintel forming a segmented arch and the crescent-shaped typanum, resembles the refectory doorway at Lilleshall Abbey. The flat scallops of the interior capitals of the chapter house windows are similar to some of the scallops decorating some capitals at Lilleshall Abbey. The form of the sheathing, like a funnel enclosing the cones of the chapter house and parlour vault capitals also resembles work at Lilleshall.