Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory / A Short History of Their Foundation and a Description of Their Buildings

by Rev. Thomas Perkins

CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

On the promontory washed on the one side by the slow stream of the Dorset Stour, and on the other by the no less sluggish flow of the Wiltshire Avon, not far from the place where they mingle their waters before making their way amid mudflats and sandbanks into the English Channel, stands, and has stood for more than eight hundred years, the stately Priory Church which gives the name of Christchurch to a small town in the county of Hants. The massive walls of its Norman nave, its fifteenth-century tower, and its great length—for, from the east wall of its Lady Chapel to the west wall of its tower, it measures no less than 311 feet—make it a conspicuous object from the Channel, especially after sundown, when its form, rising above the low shore of Christchurch Bay, is silhouetted against the sky. It is one of the finest churches below cathedral rank that is to be found in England. It is a perfect mine of wealth to the student of architecture, containing examples of every style from its early, possibly Saxon, crypt to the Renaissance of its chantries. Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in the nave, with its massive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel.

The crypts beneath the north transept and the presbytery may have belonged to the original church, but of that which is visible above ground the oldest part was due to Flambard, of whom more hereafter. When the first church was founded we cannot tell. Here, as in many other places, the origin is lost in the haze of antiquity and legend. Here, as at many other places, we find the original builders choosing one site, and the stones that they had laid during the day being removed by night by unseen, and therefore angelic, hands to another. It was on the heights of St Catharine, about a mile and a half away from the present site, that the human builders strove to raise their church. It may be that this hill, still marked by the ramparts of an ancient encampment, was not holy ground on account of its former occupation by heathens, though in after time, a chapel, built in the early part of the fourteenth century, existed there; but, anyhow, not on this hill, but on the flat lands of Saxon Tweoxneham, a name which passed into the forms of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease. A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut too short for the place it was to occupy, he lengthened it by drawing it out with his hand; and when the day for consecration came, and the other workmen gathered together to see their work hallowed by due ceremonial, this stranger workman was nowhere to be seen. The ecclesiastics came to the conclusion that this was none other than the carpenter's son of Nazareth, and the church which had in part been builded by the hands of the Christ Himself in later days became known as Christchurch.

But, if we disregard these legends, we do not at once find ourselves on sure and certain ground. The foundation has been attributed to Æthelstan, but this is hardly likely, as, in a charter dated 939, he gives one of the weirs on the Avon at Twynham to the Abbey Church of Middleton, now Milton Abbey in North Dorset, which he would be hardly likely to do if he had founded, or were thinking of founding, a religious house at Twynham; and as he died in 940, not much time was left for any foundation after this grant. Again, we find King Eadred granting land and fishing near Twineham to Dunstan. However, in the time of the Confessor, mention is made of the canons of Holy Trinity possessing lands in Thuinam. It must be remembered that it had been intended, according to the legend, to dedicate the church to the Holy Trinity, and no doubt this was done, although it was afterwards identified especially with the second Person.

In Domesday it is stated that the canons of the Church of the Holy Trinity hold lands in the village, and also in the Isle of Wight opposite. Certain it is that in the days of Eadward the Confessor there was a church at Twynham dedicated to the Holy Trinity, held by a collegiate society of secular canons. This church was swept away by Ranulf Flambard, the notorious justiciar and chaplain of William II., whose evil deeds, contrary to the oft-quoted passage from Mark Antony's speech in Julius Cæsar, are now generally forgotten; while the good deeds that he wrought,—the nave of this church, and the still grander nave of Durham Cathedral Church, Durham Castle, "Norham's castled steep," and Kepier Hospital, built while he held the most important diocese in the North of England,—live after him, and have shed a glory on his name. Evil he was in moral character without doubt, but a glorious builder nevertheless. Though he oppressed the clergy, though it was through his instrumentality and by his advice that sees were kept vacant for years, and when filled, only given to those who were able and willing to pay large sums to the king, yet it is rather as a great architect than as an ecclesiastic that we, who gaze with delight and admiration on his work that has come down to us, will regard him. It is said that, as his end drew nigh, he realised the amount of evil he had done, and strove to make his peace with heaven and restitution to some, at least, of those whom he had wronged. He died in 1128, and his body rests in the great Cathedral Church of St Cuthbert that he had done so much to raise. But it was in the earlier part of his career, before he received the bishopric of Durham in 1099, that he probably began the work at Christchurch with which we are at present concerned.[^[4]] He was succeeded there by Godric, who is called Senior and Patron and afterwards Dean; but Flambard seems still to have exercised some authority over him, illegal probably, but none the less real. We find him granting to Godric, for the work of building, all the offerings made by strangers and pilgrims, and when a canon died his share of the revenues of the college was devoted to the same object, the vacancy not being filled up by the appointment of any new canon.

The length of Godric's tenure of office is uncertain. On his death Henry I. appointed Gilbert de Dousgunels dean, having appropriated to himself the accumulated fabric fund. Henry I. granted the patronage of the church to Richard de Redvers, Earl of Devon, who appointed his chaplain, Peter, a Norman of Caen, dean. This dean seems to have diverted the funds from the work of completing the church, but his successor, Randulphus, carried on the work again, so that in his time the church and the conventual buildings were roofed in. In the time of Hilary, in the year 1150, the secular college of canons was converted into a Priory of Augustinian Canons. This change was made with the consent of Baldwin de Redvers, in accordance with the wishes of Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and at that time Bishop of Winchester, who is well known from the fact of his founding the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Hilary, two years before this change was made, had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester, and subsequently became one of the episcopal opponents of Thomas Becket. Henceforth, until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII., the head of the religious community at Christchurch was a prior, who was, according to a charter granted by Richard de Redvers in 1160, elected by the canons. There were, in all, twenty-six priors, and their names have come down to us, but with only the most meagre notices of the architectural work which was carried on by each of them. Extensive, however, it must have been; and from what we see of the church itself, it would seem as if building operations must have been almost constantly in progress.

In all probability there was, according to the usual plan of Norman churches, a tower at the junction of the nave and transepts, and beyond this an apsidal choir. But there is no documentary record of such a tower ever having been built or fallen, although its existence is rendered probable by a carving of a church with tower and spire on Draper's chantry, and by a similar representation on a seal, and in two other parts of the building. It is probable that the original choir extended westward beyond the transept, as at Westminster to the present day.

As has been stated above, the Norman church was commenced by Flambard towards the end of the eleventh century; and of the work so begun, the earliest existing remains are the arcading of the nave, the triforium, and the transepts with the eastern apsidal chapel attached to the south transept. Next to this in order came the walls of the aisles of the nave, and the cloisters and chapter-house, which, however, have disappeared; cloisters would come to be considered a necessity as soon as the secular canons were superseded by regulars. The early English clerestory of the nave seems to have been built in the time of the third prior, Peter, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. To the end of same century may be approximately assigned the vaulting of the nave aisles, the north porch, and a chapel attached to the north transept. Alterations of an extensive nature seem to have been begun in the fourteenth century; for to this date belong the rood screen, placed farther to the east than the old division between the ritual choir of the canons and the western part of the nave, which was probably given up to the lay dwellers in the parish,—and the splendid reredos. The Lady Chapel also was completed certainly before 1406, probably eleven years earlier. The fifteenth century saw the western tower built and the choir commenced and a great part of it finished, though the vaulting seems not to have been completed until the early part of the sixteenth century, as W. E. the initials of William Eyre, who was prior from 1502 to 1520, are to be seen on the bosses and the arch of the south choir aisle. Somewhat later still is the chantry at the east end of the south choir aisle, built by the last prior and dated 1529, and the chantry built by the last of the Plantagenets, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the Earl of Clarence and mother of Cardinal Pole, who at the age of seventy was executed by Henry VIII. in 1541.

Shortly before the dissolution in 1536 Prior Draper addressed a petition to Henry VIII. which is still in existence in the Record Office, praying that he would spare the Priory church, basing his request upon the desolate character of the district, the poverty of the house, and the fact that the church was not only a place for poor religious men, but also a parish church to the town and hamlets round about, whose inhabitants numbered from fifteen to sixteen hundred, that there was no place where any honest man on horseback or on foot might have succour or repose for the space of eight or nine miles, "but only this poor place of Christchurch, to which both rich and poor doth repair and repose." He goes on to say how it was of late years a place of secular canons, until the king's antecessors made it a place of canons regular, that "the poor, not only of the parish and town, but also of the country, were daily relieved and sustained with bread and ale, purposely baked and brewed for them weekly to no small quantities according to their foundation, and a house ordained purposely for them, and officers according duly given attendance to serve them to their great comfort and relief." But all the pleading was in vain. Commissioners were appointed, who presented their report to Lord Cromwell December 2, 1539. They say that "we found the Prior a very honest and conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king's majesty's use." Then follows a list of the treasures of the abbey, of the yearly value of the several endowments, and of the officers of the Priory, thirteen in number besides the Prior. Prior Draper retired on a pension, and the site of the domestic buildings was conveyed to Stephen and Margaret Kirton. The domestic buildings themselves gradually disappeared, but the whole of the church was handed over to the parish as a church, the grant to the churchwardens being made by letters patent 23 October 32 Henry VIII. It conveyed to them "the choir body, bell-tower with seven bells, stones, timber, lead of roofing and gutters of the church and the cemetery on the north side." Since then the church has been served by vicars, the patronage being in the hands of the dean and chapter of Winchester until the nineteenth century, when the advowson was purchased by Lord Malmesbury. The living is now in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester.

During the present century much restoration has been done. The nave was vaulted in stucco in 1819; the west window was taken in hand in 1828; the pinnacles of the tower and the upper part of the turret containing the stairs were renewed in 1871; and constant repairs have been going on up to the present time; and the principle that has guided the restorer has been, when any stonework has been removed to put in its place as exact a copy of the old as possible,—a principle that cannot be approved of, as it will lead, when the newness of the modern work has been toned down by time, to confusion between the genuine old work and the modern imitation of it. It is far better, when there is no question of stability but only of appearance, to leave the old stonework, even though much decayed, as it is, unscraped, untouched by the chisel, and where strength is needed to put in frankly nineteenth-century work, which could never by any possibility be mistaken for part of the original building.

One of the most glaring instances of injudicious restoration is to be met with in the apsidal chapel attached to the eastern side of the south transept. This work was carried out by the Hon. C. Harris, late Bishop of Gibraltar. The arcading is a nineteenth-century imitation of Norman work; the pavement is glaringly modern. Of what interest, it may well be asked, is such work? Who would care to visit Christchurch to see it? The nineteenth-century carver cannot possibly produce work similar to that of the carver who lived in the twelfth century,—the conditions of his life are altogether different, his training bears no resemblance to that of the old artist, his work is a forgery, and a most clumsy one too. In this chapel we see this reprehensible practice carried to its fullest extent, but there are many other parts of the building which have suffered. Most of the arcading on the exterior of the transept is modern imitation, and the tracery of the windows of the south choir aisle has been entirely renewed; no old stones, though many might have been used, have been reset in their original position. The arcading of the south aisle of the nave has been terribly tampered with. Possibly under the influence of time many of the shafts had partially crumbled, and the surface of the carved capitals had perished, so that the original design could not be made out; but that was no reason for cutting away the ornamental work to make way for modern decoration which may or may not bear some slight resemblance to what was there before. Some of the piers of the nave arcading have also been partially renewed. By an act of much-to-be-condemned vandalism the sub-arches of the two eastern bays of the south triforium of the nave were cut away to make room for faculty pews; recently a glaring white pillar has been introduced into the westernmost of these two bays, and two sub-arches built. If the same kind of work is carried out in the other, we shall see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady Chapel, and the re-pointing of the stonework. Old builders invariably covered their rubble walls with plaster, but the modern restorer for some reason seems to hate plaster and prefers, to show the coarse stonework which the builder never intended should be seen, and to emphasise the roughness by filling up the joints with conspicuous pointing. This, however, is not so destructive as much of the work which has been condemned above, because at any time the walls could be recovered with a thin coat of smooth plaster laid on with a trowel, but not "floated,"—that is, not brought to a smooth surface by a long straightedge.

A large and old building such as this Priory Church will need almost constant repairs to keep it sound and safe, and the income from visitors' fees is quite sufficient for this purpose. It is, however, much to be feared that restoration and reconstruction will form far too large a part of the work done in this building. Every new ornamental stone, to make room for which some original stone is displaced, detracts from the value of the building from an archæological point of view; and though there may be some, or even many, who prefer the trim and smug appearance of modern work to that of the old, instinct with life, full of the thoughts of the builders and workers in wood and stone, whose bones have mouldered into dust in the garth of the vanished cloisters, and whose very names have in many cases been forgotten, yet we hope that those who have this priceless treasure in their keeping may recognise ere it is too late, that the result of a continuance of the process of restoration commenced about the middle of the nineteenth century will be the gradual conversion of a splendid memorial of bygone ages into a modern sham, and they themselves will be regarded, when true love of art becomes general, with the same indignation as that which they themselves feel with regard to those who pulled down the roof of the south transept and cut out the columns and sub-arches of the triforium in days before the Gothic revival set in. And the modern restorer has less excuse than the destroyer of a hundred years ago. If, like the vandals of the Georgian period, they had been blind to the beauties of architectural art, they would have had no sin, yet since they profess to see, therefore their sin will remain and their names will be held in perpetual reproach and everlasting contempt.

The foregoing historical sketch of the building has perforce been somewhat vague in dates, for, in the absence of documentary evidence, it is not easy to fix from architectural considerations alone the date of any particular piece of work within a limit of some twenty years or so. The out-of-the-way position of the Priory of Christchurch—for no great road ran through the town, and though it is near the sea there is no convenient harbour near it—has brought it to pass that it is scarcely mentioned in any mediæval chronicles. Its own fabric rolls and annals have been lost. Here and there, however, the date of a will or the inscription on a monument has enabled a more definite date to be arrived at. The dates also of the dedications of some of the many altars are known—viz. that of the Holy Saviour, used by the canons as their high altar, and that of St Stephen, dedicated by the Bishop of Ross in 1199; that of the altar of the Holy Trinity, which stood in the nave, and was the high altar of the parish; and those of the altars of SS. Peter and Paul, SS. Augustine and Gregory and all the Prophets, dedicated by Walter, Bishop of Whitherne, on November 7, 1214; that of the altar of St John the Baptist and St Edmund, dedicated on December 7, 1214, by the same bishop; and that of the altar of SS. Michael and Martin, dedicated by the Bishop of the Isles in 1221.