 The site of the church shows no evidence of a pre-Conquest church, and the earliest religious building there may have been a Norman church associated with Usk Castle on the site of the present West nave.In the years before his death in 1176, Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke founded a Benedictine nunnery on the site.In the thirteenth century the North aisle was added as a place of worship for the people of the town, separated with a screen from the parts of the priory used exclusively by the nuns.