Memorials of Old Dorset

by Unknown

And so we are brought to the time when our ecclesiastical lords, the Bishop of Sarum and the Abbot of Sherborne, passed away from us, and their places were taken by lay lords. Here, too, we meet with famous names. We have the Protector Somerset, to whom, indirectly, Sherborne School may owe its post-Reformation endowment. We have, also, Henry, Prince of Wales, that “young Marcellus of the House of Stuart,” the eldest son of James I., whose hatchment, as that of a squire of Sherborne, still hangs in our Abbey Church; we have Walter Ralegh, that restless, strenuous soul, whose dearly-loved home Sherborne was, where he would gladly have been buried; we have John Digby, first Earl of Bristol, whose name stands high among those of English worthies in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have hazarded his all in a better cause. And another name insistently presents itself to anyone who has followed Sherborne history—that of Hugo Daniel Harper. To him Sherborne town and school owe much that is precious and enduring. That a little town like ours has kept something of its ancient state, that here we can still so easily call back the past of Wessex, can still see standing in beauty and dignity these buildings which the Middle Age has left us—all this is in no small degree owing to that famous headmaster of Sherborne School and to his successors.

We now proceed to write more particularly of the most interesting of these ancient buildings and institutions. They are four in number: the Abbey Church, the School, the old Castle, and the Almshouse.

With the exception of a small part of the west front of the Abbey Church, there is, so far as we can tell, not a single piece of wall standing now in Sherborne which was standing in the year 1107, when Roger of Caen became Bishop of Sarum and Abbot of Sherborne. We know that the doorway, now blocked up, on the north side of the west front of the church, and, therefore, also some of the adjoining wall, is older than Bishop Roger’s time; but with that exception, we are forced to admit that the Norman from Caen pulled down all the rest of Ealdhelm’s church. If he left any more of it, either time has destroyed this, or he so used the walls that they cannot now be recognised with any certainty. At the same time there is a piece of outside wall at the north end of the north transept, in the old slype, which looks very like pre-Norman work.

The church which Roger built extended as far east as the present church does, excluding the lady chapels; for the lady chapel of the thirteenth century must have abutted on the Norman east end, just as it now does on the Perpendicular ambulatory. The church extended probably rather further to the west than the present church does, for there exists evidence to show that, before the parish church of All Hallows was built on to the west end of the Abbey Church in the fourteenth century, the west front of the Abbey Church was embellished with a large porch of Norman work.

The chief traces of Roger’s work still existing in the church are the piers and arches that carry the tower, the transept walls, the arches leading from the transept into the side aisles of the nave, and the walls of these aisles. Other interesting traces of Roger’s work will be found in the little chapel which projects eastwards from the north transept; also in the south and west walls of the early English chapel on the north side of the north aisle of the choir, commonly called Bishop Roger’s Chapel, and now used as the vestry; these Norman walls were outside walls of Roger’s church before this early English addition was made. There is also the jamb of a window to be seen on the outside of the east wall of the south transept, the only relic which gives us an idea of what the Norman clerestory was like.

The choir of Roger’s church extended west of the central tower, and to allow room for the stall-work, the shafts of the east and west tower arches were corbelled off above the line of the stalls, as may still be seen in the existing church. That part of the Abbey nave which lay to the west of the Norman choir was used, until the building of All Hallows, as the parish church; and the fine Norman south porch, which has been rather over-restored in the nineteenth century, was, no doubt, a parochial porch, for it faces the town, not the monastic buildings, which are on the north side of the church.

The tower up to the floor of the bell-chamber is Norman. Over the pier-arches which carry it, except on the east side, there is a passage in the thickness of the wall, with an arcade of semi-circular arches resting on circular and octagonal shafts, eleven inches in diameter. On the east side the Norman pier-arch was removed at the rebuilding of the choir in the fifteenth century, and the removal of this arch so weakened the tower that its condition in the course of years became dangerous. The tower was made secure in 1884-5, and these shafts on the north-west and south sides of the lantern, which had been concealed by the fifteenth century masonry, were again displayed to view.

A large lady chapel was added in the thirteenth century; the fine Early English arch, by which it was entered from the church, may still be seen in the east wall of the ambulatory. The centre of this arch is to the south of that of the fifteenth century arch, and hence the corbels of the Perpendicular vaulting do not correspond at all with the Early English arch; one of them is actually constructed to hang as a pendant, free of this arch altogether.

The changes made inside the church in the fourteenth century were so slight as to need no mention. Outside the church, however, a great change took place, for towards the end of this century the church of All Hallows was built. The great west porch was pulled down so that All Hallows might stand directly against the west front of the Norman church. There are still to be seen remnants of All Hallows, viz., the lower part of the north wall of the north aisle, and four responds built into the west wall of the Abbey Church. When All Hallows was standing with its pinnacled western tower, one would have seen a church some 350 feet long, with a central and a western tower. This latter tower had a ring of bells of its own, at least five in number; and it was to this ring of the parish, not to the Abbey, that Wolsey gave our great bell.

In the fifteenth century Sherborne saw great things in the way of building; not only was the Almshouse then built, but the church also underwent those changes which gave it the appearance it keeps to-day. The choir was taken down during the last year or two of Abbot John Brunyng’s rule, and rebuilt from the ground by his successor, William Bradford (1436-1459). During this same century the smaller lady chapel, called the Bow Chapel, was built, and the nave restored in the style of the time by Abbot Peter Ramsam (1475-1504). To these two men we owe our present splendid fabric. Any visitor to Sherborne Abbey can for himself easily perceive the differences which mark off the choir as a building from the nave. The choir from floor to vault is one harmonious piece of work, so lovely, so complete, that the wit of man could scarcely design anything finer; while the nave is a compromise, for in the nave yet stand the old Norman piers cased in Perpendicular panelling, and the effect which the nave gives us is that of two stories distinctly marked off the one from the other, the lower story bearing strong traces of its Norman origin, the upper or clerestory plainly a Perpendicular work, and worthy of the companion clerestory of the choir. The pillars of the southern arcade of the nave are not opposite those of the northern arcade, and the arches are of different widths; the clerestory arches of the nave, on the other hand, are of equal widths, and hence the clerestory arches are not directly above the arcade arches. This compromise has, however, been effected so cleverly that few people notice the irregularity.