intimidated many of the more successful institutions into surrender. Haughmond took this step in 1539, the year before the Second Act of Dissolution. The commission to dissolve the abbey was issued from Woodstock Palace on 23 August 1539 and signed by Thomas Cromwell. A deed of surrender was drawn up on 19 September. The abbot, Thomas Corveser, the prior, John Colfox, and nine canons signed it by 16 October, acknowledging Henry VIII as supreme over the Church of England on earth. Each of them received a generous pension: the abbot £40 a year, the prior £8, and the canons either £5 6s. 8d. or £6 each. Two canons did not sign, William Rolfe who received a pension of £7, and Richard Doone, who received only 40 shillings. In 1540 the abbey site was sold to Sir Edward Littleton, a religious conservative, of Pillaton Hall, Staffordshire. Only two years later, Littleton sold it to Sir Rowland Hill, a Protestant who became Lord Mayor of London in 1547, and soon after sold Haughmond to the Barker family. During this period the Abbot's Hall and adjoining rooms were converted into a private residence, although the church and dormitory were already being plundered for building stone. Some of the other buildings around the little cloister continued as private accommodation, with the Little Cloister becoming a formal garden, up until the English Civil War. There was a fire during the Civil War and it left the hands of the wealthy, being turned over for use as a farm. A small cottage still stood in the area of the former abbots kitchen when the ruins were placed in the guardianship of the Office of Works in 1933. The site was excavated in 1907 under the supervision of William Henry St John Hope and Harold Brakspear, who published their findings in The Archaeological Journal. More excavations took place between 1975 and 1979, directed by Jeffrey West for the Department of the Environment, in the north part of the cloister, the south transept and the south part of the choir of the abbey church, with the dual purpose of recovering the plan of the cloister walk and re-examining the early church identified by the 1907 excavation. Further work was undertaken by English Heritage in 2002 and is the most comprehensive analysis and survey of the earthworks to be undertaken to date. Today English Heritage looks after the site.