The descriptions of these old rectory-houses are interesting. The Rector of Allington, Kent, possessed a house consisting of “a hall, parlour, and chamber over the parlour, stairs-head, beside the parson’s bedchamber, parson’s lodging-chamber, study, chamber behind the chimney, chamber next adjoining westward, buttery, priest’s chamber, servants’ chamber, kitchen, mill-house, boulting-house, larder, entries, women’s chamber; gatehouse, still beside the gate, barn next the gate; cartlage, barn next the church, garden-house, court.” The barn next the church was probably the tithe-barn. Tithe was then paid in kind; hence a barn was required to contain the dues of the parishioners. Sometimes these tithe-barns are very large and long, especially when the tithe-owner was the abbot of some monastery. Near Reading there is still standing the barn of the abbey, and at Cholsey, in Berkshire, there is one of the finest specimens of the kind in England.


[ENLARGE]

STONE TITHE BARN, BRADFORD-ON-AVON

There still remain several of these old pre-Reformation parsonages and rectories. The most noted is the clergy-house at Alfriston, Sussex, which has been carefully preserved. It follows the usual type of fourteenth-century house, and consists of a fine hall, the lower part divided off by a screen, a soler of two stories at one end, and a kitchen at the other. It is built of oak framework, filled in with “wattle and daub.” There is a large chimney and grate in the hall, and huge beams support the thatched roof. Parsonages of mediaeval times remain at West Dean, Sussex; at King’s Stanley and Notgrove, Gloucestershire; Wonstone, Hants; Helmsley, Yorkshire; and at several other places. The Rectory of Shellingford, Berks, though much disguised by modern additions, is an original fourteenth-century house.

In many villages there are old almshouses founded by pious benefactors for “poor brethren and sisters.” As we enter the quiet courtyard paved with cobble stones, the spirit of olden days comes over us. The chapel where daily prayer is said morning and evening; the panelled dining-hall, with its dark oaken table; the comfortable rooms of the brethren; the time-worn pump in the courtyard—all recall the memory of old times, when life was more tranquil, and there was less hurry and busy bustling.

Sometimes we meet with a curious little house built of stone or timber, erected along the great highways, near some bridge or ford, wherein a “holy hermit” once dwelt, and served his generation by directing travellers to the nearest monastery or rectory, and spent his days in seclusion and prayer. Such indeed is the traditional idea of the hermit’s life; but the real hermit of the Middle Ages did not always live a very lonely or ascetic life. He was supported by the alms of the charitable and did no work, but lived an idle life, endured no hardships, and escaped not the scoffs of the satirical. Piers Ploughman tells us of workmen—“webbers and tailors, and carters’ knaves, and clerks without grace, who liked not long labour and light wages; and seeing that lazy fellows in friars’ clothing had fat cheeks, forsook their toil and turned hermits. They lived in boroughs among brewers and begged in churches.” They had a good house, with sometimes a chaplain to say daily Mass for them, a servant or two to wait on them, and plenty of food and drink provided by a regular endowment or the donations of the charitable. They did not shut themselves up in their cells and hold no intercourse with their fellow-men; and herein they differed from the recluses who were not supposed to go outside the doors of their anchorages. Both males and females were enrolled as recluses, but only the latter seem to have taken upon themselves the vows of complete seclusion.

Several of these hermitages remain. There is one at Little Budworth, in Cheshire, in the park of Sir Philip Egerton. Warkworth has a famous one, consisting of a chapel hewn out of the rock, with an entrance porch, and a long, narrow room with a small altar at the east end, wherein the hermit lived. At Knaresborough, Yorkshire, there is a good example of a hermitage, hewn out of the rock, consisting of a chapel, called St. Robert’s Chapel, with groined roof, which was used as the living-room of the hermit. This chapel was the scene of Eugene Aram’s murder. At Wetheral, near Carlisle; Lenton, near Nottingham; on the banks of the Severn, near Bewdley, Worcestershire, there are anchorages, and also at Brandon, Downham, and Stow Bardolph, in Norfolk. Spenser in the Faery Queen gives the following description of a hermit’s cell:—

“A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down by a dale, hard by a forest’s side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In traveill to and froe; a little wyde
There was an holy Chappell edifyde,
Wherein the hermite dewly wont to say
His holy things, each morne and eventyde;
Hereby a chrystall streame did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway.”

Within the churchyard of many a town or village church, and usually attached to the church, stood a reclusorium, or anchor-hold, wherein a recluse, male or female, once resided. At Laindon Church, Essex, there is a fine specimen of a house of this kind attached to the west end. Generally the anchor-hold was a small room, built of wood, connected with the church. Frequently there is a room over the porch of a church which may have been used for this purpose, the recluse living usually in the church. At Rettenden, Essex, there is a room over the vestry which has evidently been an anchor-hold. There was a window, now blocked up, through which the recluse could see the high altar, and the celebration of the holy mysteries, and another for him to look out, hold converse with his friends, and receive their alms. The church of St. Patricio, near Crickhowel, South Wales, has an anchor-hold; also Clifton Campville Church, Staffordshire; Chipping Norton Church, Oxfordshire; Warmington Church, Warwickshire; and many churches have rooms over the porch which were formerly used by recluses. The church itself was frequently the habitation of the anchorite. There is a notice of a hermit who lived in St. Cuthbert’s Church, Thetford, and performed divine service therein.