Repton and its neighbourhood

by F. C. Hipkins

Plate 3.

Repton Church Crypt. ([Page 17.])

CHAPTER IV.
REPTON CHURCH.

Repton Church is built on the site of the Anglo-Saxon Monastery, which was destroyed by the Danes in the year 874. It was most probably built in the reign of Edgar the Peaceable (959-975), as Dr. Charles Cox writes:—“Probably about that period the religious ardour of the persecuted Saxons revived ... their thoughts would naturally revert to the glories of monastic Repton in the days gone by.” On the ruins of the “Abbey” they raised a church, and dedicated it to St. Wystan. According to several writers, it was built of stout oak beams and planks, on a foundation of stone, or its sides might have been made of wattle, composed of withy twigs, interlaced between the oak beams, daubed within and without with mud or clay. This church served for a considerable time, when it was re-built of stone. The floor of the chancel, supported on beams of wood, was higher than the present one, so the chancel had an upper and lower “choir,” the lower one was lit by narrow lights, two of which, blocked up, can be seen in the south wall of the chancel. When the church was re-built the chancel floor was removed, and the lower “choir” was converted into the present crypt, by the introduction of a vaulted stone roof, which is supported by four spirally-wreathed piers, five feet apart, and five feet six inches high, and eight square responds, slightly fluted, of the same height, and distance apart, all with capitals with square abaci, which are chamfered off below. Round the four walls is a double string-course, below which the walls are ashlar, remarkably smooth, as though produced by rubbing the surface with stone, water and sand. The vaulted roof springs from the upper string-course, the ribs are square in section, one foot wide, there are no diagonal groins, it is ten feet high, and is covered with a thin coating of plaster, which is continued down to the upper string-course. The piers are monoliths, and between the wreaths exhibit that peculiar swell which we see on the shafts of Anglo-Saxon belfry windows, &c.

The double string-course is terminated by the responds. There were recesses in each of the walls of the crypt. In the wall of the west recess there is a small arch, opening into a smaller recess, about 18 inches square. Many suggestions have been made about it: (1) it was a “holy hole” for the reception of relics, (2) or a opening in which a lamp could be kept lit, (3) or that it was used as a kind of “hagioscope,” through which the crypt could be seen from the nave of the church, when the chancel floor was higher, and the nave floor lower than they are now.

There are two passages to the church, about two feet wide and ten feet high, made from the western angles of the crypt.

A doorway was made, on the north side, with steps leading down to it, from the outside, during the thirteenth century; there is a holy water stoup in the wall, on the right hand as you enter the door.

For many years it has been a matter of dispute how far the recesses in the crypt, on the east, north, and south sides, extended. Excavations just made (Sept. 1898), have exposed the foundations of the recesses. The recess on the south side is rectangular, not apsidal as some supposed, it projects 2 ft. 2 in. from the surface of the wall, outside, and is 6 ft. 2 in. wide. About two feet below the ground level, two blocks of stone were discovered, (each 2 ft. × 1 ft. 4 in. × 1 ft. 9 in.), two feet apart, they rest on a stone foundation. The inside corners are chamfered off. On a level with the stone foundation, to the south of it, are two slabs under which a skeleton was seen, whose it was, of course, cannot be said. The present walls across the recesses, on the south and east, block them half up, and were built in later times.