Memorials of Old Dorset

by Unknown

And yet it is an ancient place. Here, early in the eighth century, Cudburh, or Cuthberga, sister of Ine, the famous King of the West Saxons, whose laws were the foundation of the liberties of his subjects, and show a spirit of tolerance hitherto unknown towards the conquered Celts, founded a nunnery. Here, in 851, the then Earl of Devon is said to have defeated the Danes; here Æthelred, the brother and immediate predecessor of Ælfred on the West Saxon throne, having died of a wound received in battle with the Danes, we know not where, was buried in 871. Hither came the Danes again, plundering the town and destroying the convent. Hither, too, after the death of Ælfred, in 901, came Æthelwold, the Ætheling (son of Ælfred’s brother, Æthelred, who had been passed over as too young to rule when his father died) rebelling against the new King, Ælfred’s son, Eadward the Unconquered, and possessed himself of Wimborne. Eadward marched from the south against him, and encamped within the rampart of Badbury Rings, a few miles to the west of Wimborne; hence he sent a message to Æthelwold, bidding him surrender. To this Æthelwold returned stout answer that he would either live or die in Wimborne. But after the messenger had gone back he took counsel with himself, and decided that as the first alternative was impossible, and the second unpleasant, he would see if a third course were not open to him—namely, to live elsewhere. So he fled to Normandy, and thence to Northumberland, which was then under Danish rule, and, throwing in his lot with the enemies of Wessex, he collected a band of freebooters from beyond the sea, and received some assistance from the East Anglian Danes. But all to no purpose, for the “Unconquered” King overthrew him and his Danish allies in many fights, and recovered all the booty they had carried off.

But it is the church that is the centre of interest of Wimborne. Ine, King of the West Saxons, had two sisters, perhaps more, but only two are connected with Wimborne. Cuthberga was betrothed to the Northumbrian King, Æcgfred, or Osric, as he is often called, but when she met him she found his rough northern manners and his intemperate habits little in harmony with her more refined disposition and mode of life. Therefore, she persuaded him to allow her to devote herself to a religious life, and retired to the nunnery at Barking; and afterwards, at what exact date we do not know, but probably not later than 705, she founded a nunnery at Wimborne, her sister being associated with her in the work. Both of these royal ladies were buried within the precincts, and in due time canonised as St. Cuthberga and St. Cwenberga; the former was commemorated as a virgin on August 31st. A special service appointed for the day may still be read in a Missal kept in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury.

Wimborne Minster.

The convent of Wimborne can boast of another illustrious lady among those who took the veil within its walls—St. Walburga, or Walpurgis. Somewhere about the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century, she was born in Sussex, and was educated at the newly-founded nunnery at Wimborne, and became in due course a nun; here she stayed for yet another twenty-seven years. Then, by the desire of her uncle, St. Boniface, and her brother Wilibald, she set out with thirty other nuns to found religious houses in Germany. She first settled at Bischofsheim, in the diocese of Maintz, and in 754 became Abbess of the Benedictine house at Heidenheim, which was situated within the diocese of Eichstädt, in Bavaria, of which her brother, Wilibald, was Bishop. Another brother, Winebald, was head of the Benedictine monastery in the same place; and when he died, in 760, Walburga received the charge of this house in addition to her own, and continued to rule both until her death in 779. She was buried in a hollow rock at Eichstädt, from which a bituminous oil, afterwards called Walpurgis’ oil, exuded. This was supposed to possess miraculous powers of healing, so that her grave was much visited by pilgrims, and a church was built over it. She is commemorated at different times in different places, but chiefly on May 1st, a day originally celebrated with heathen ceremonies, emblematical of the birth of Summer. Hence some of the heathen rites still lingered on, just as certain of our Christmas customs are of heathen origin. The readers of Göethe’s Faust cannot help remembering the revels of the witches on the Brocken on Walpurgis’ night.

The nunnery at Wimborne perished in some plundering raid of the Danes some time during the ninth century. Whether Ælfred did anything to restore it we do not know, but a king of the name of Eadward, either Ælfred’s son, the “Unconquered,” or the Confessor, founded a college of secular priests at Wimborne. Again, we know not whether the church of this college occupied the site of the old convent church or not. The names of the deans from 1224 until the Dissolution, in 1547, have come down to us. The only one of these whose name is known in history is the last but one—Cardinal Pole, who held this position from 1517 till 1537, being only seventeen years of age at the time of his appointment. When the deanery was abolished, Wimborne Minster became a Royal Peculiar, under the administration of three priest-vicars. The arrangement was a somewhat unusual one; each of the three was responsible for the services for one week, one of the other two acted as his curate in the Minster, and the other took charge of the chapelry of Holt. The next week they changed places; and so on continually. This curious arrangement continued in force till 1876, when one vicar retired on a pension, another removed to Holt, where a parsonage had been built for him, and the third became sole vicar of the Minster and the parish attached to it.

The history of the church is best read in its stones; written records are scanty. The central part, all in Norman style, the work of the twelfth century, is the oldest; from this the building gradually extended north, south, east, and west, as well as upwards, in the course of the next three centuries; but the builders who enlarged did not wantonly destroy the work of their predecessors. Probably the chief cause of this was lack of funds; there was no shrine of saint, nor tomb of martyr, nor wonder-waking relic to attract pilgrims, whose alms, had they come, would have enriched the church, as many another church was enriched, and had to pay the penalty of over-much wealth in the form of demolition and reconstruction. Wimborne Minster was simply enlarged; the outer walls, of course, had sometimes to be pulled down. Thus in the thirteenth century the Norman east end, which was probably apsidal, had to be demolished to afford space for eastward extension, and the date of this extension is determined by the character of the east window; the windows of the aisles proclaim themselves to be of fourteenth century date; the western tower is a century later. The church is one of the few that possess two towers, set tandem fashion, one at the crossing, the other at the west end. It is not a very satisfactory arrangement from an artistic point of view, and has in the few instances in which it has been introduced been unfortunate. Hereford had two towers thus placed, but the western one fell; Wymondham, in Norfolk, has two still standing, but the east end of the church is a ruin; Wimborne central tower was once surmounted by a spire, but this fell. Exeter and Ottery have two towers, but these are placed in a different manner, their bases forming the north and south ends of the transept.

The central tower at Wimborne is the older. It is supported on four massive Norman piers; the east and west arches beneath it are wider than the other two; to bring the capitals from which they spring all into one horizontal plane and the crowns of the four arches all into another horizontal plane, the builders made the wider arches segments of a circle less than semi-circles, and the narrower ones segments greater than semi-circles, giving them the shape of horse-shoes. Above this lower stage are three others—the triforium stage, with a gallery in the thickness of the wall; above this comes the clerestory, added later; and above it another stage, still later, because here, in place of the simple arches seen on the outside of the lower stages, we find interesting arches forming lancet-headed openings; above this is a heavy, ugly parapet and set of pinnacles, erected in 1608 after the fall of the central spire. The western tower is higher than the central one, contains the bells, and, just outside the easternmost window, on the north side of the belfry stage, there stands the wooden figure of a soldier, who strikes the quarter-hours on two bells, one on each side of him, and is known as the “Quarter Jack.”

Inside this western tower, on the face of the south wall, is a curious clock made by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury, in the early part of the fourteenth century. It tells not only the time of day, but the day of the month and the age of the moon. The earth is represented by a globe in the centre; the sun by a ball on a disc, which travels round it in twenty-four hours, showing the time of day; the moon as a globe on another disc, which revolves once in a lunar month. Half of this globe is painted black, the other half is gilt, and the age of the moon is indicated by the respective proportions of black and gilt shown, for the ball itself rotates on its axis; when the moon is full the gilt half is entirely visible; when new, the black half. The clock is still in working order. A screen separates the lower stage of the tower from the nave, and forms a baptistry, in which stands an octagonal font of Norman character, large enough for baptising an infant by immersion.

From the west end, the church presents a very imposing appearance. The nearer pillars, it is true, are rather mean; they are of fourteenth century date, and very plain. It has been, with some probability, conjectured that they were brought from some other church which had been pulled down just before the time when this church was extended westward, possibly when the western tower was built. The pillars of the original nave are cylindrical and massive, the arches of the main arcading resting upon them are pointed; above is a plain wall; the division between the original and the added work is shown by the different character of the mouldings of the arches, and of the string-course above them, and by the fact that to the east there are the original Norman clerestory windows, while the walls to the west are not broken by any openings whatever.