Memorials of old Durham

by Unknown

Allusion has already been made to the congregation of St. Cuthbert, but of that body some further account must be given. The religious community, the congregation of St. Cuthbert, which ultimately settled at Durham, included the Bishop and the monks. The two formed one body, whose interests were identical, and whose property was in common; and the Bishop lived among the monks, over whom he ruled within the community as he ruled over the diocese without, having no estates or means of subsistence separate from the congregation of which he formed a part. This unity between the Bishop and the monks was very similar to that which prevailed amongst the early religious communities in Ireland and Scotland. The system went on at Durham until the establishment of the Benedictine Order there by Bishop William of St. Carileph, shortly after the Norman Conquest. He was the second Bishop appointed by William I., Walcher, the first Norman Bishop, having been killed, after a short reign, by his own people at Gateshead, during a rebellion caused by the oppression of his officials. William of St. Carileph, Abbot of St. Vincent, became Bishop in 1081. Originally a secular priest, he afterwards became a monk in the monastery of St. Calais, and such an establishment as that he found at Durham must have been most distasteful to him. A Benedictine monk himself, he naturally preferred being surrounded by religious of his own Order, and not by those of whose system he disapproved. In the time of Bishop Walcher the ancient monasteries of Jarrow and Wearmouth were to a great extent, though probably not altogether, deserted, and had been so since they were laid waste by the Danes. When Bishop William determined upon establishing Benedictine monks at Durham, he found these two monasteries already existing at Jarrow and Wearmouth. Thinking there were not sufficient provision for the maintenance of more than one monastery, he transferred the monks from Jarrow and Wearmouth to Durham in 1083, and founded a Benedictine house there. He became a party to the rebellion against William Rufus in 1088, and was driven an exile for three years into Normandy. It may well be that during his sojourn there he conceived the design of replacing the old church by a new and more magnificent one. Normandy at that time was full of large and noble churches, many lately erected, and we can readily understand how the thought may have passed across the mind of Carileph that, if he ever returned to Durham, he would raise there a more glorious building, and one better adapted to the wants of the new community than the church he had left behind him. At all events, on his return, he determined to build a new church, and may we not suppose that gratitude was among the motives which induced him to do this? In the meanwhile, during the time of his exile, as we learn from Symeon, the monks had built the refectory as, says he, it now stands. Symeon was living in the early part of the twelfth century; he therefore speaks with authority. The crypt under the refectory, which still exists, cannot be later than Symeon’s time, and must therefore be part of the refectory built during Carileph’s exile (1088-1091), and is therefore in either case one of the earliest buildings at Durham in connection with the monastery.

The Crypt, Durham Cathedral.

This very ancient structure lies on the south side of the cloister, and to the west of a contemporary passage leading from it into the great enclosure of the monastery, now called the college. The passage itself has an arcade of low blind arches on either side, and openings, possibly coeval with it, lead into the crypt under the refectory at one side, and into a smaller one on the other. The refectory crypt is low, being only seven and a half feet high, and commences at the east end with a division, which has a plain, barrel-shaped vault. From this an arched opening leads into the main area of the crypt. It is divided into three aisles by two rows of short, massive square pillars, four in each row, making five bays in the length. The pillars support a plain groined vault without ribs or transverse arches. This space is again succeeded towards the west by three divisions, the westernmost one being not so long as the others, all the three having, like the first and easternmost one, plain barrel vaults. Up to this point the whole crypt is of the same early date, but beyond, to the west of what appears to be an original wall, are some other structures, the cellar and pantry, of later times. The older crypt has been lighted on the south side by at least seven, or possibly more, small windows, all round-headed except one, which is circular.

To the east of the passage there is, as has already been stated, a smaller crypt, which in general corresponds with the architectural character of that under the refectory. It is now beneath the entrance-hall of the deanery, once part of the Prior’s hall, and has apparently been curtailed of some of its original length.

Symeon, a monk of Durham, already mentioned, lived when a great part of the work at the church was going on, and therefore his testimony is very important. He wrote a history of the church of Durham, and his history was continued after him by an anonymous writer. We next have a further continuation by Geoffrey de Coldingham, Robert de Graystanes, and William de Chambre, together with a number of indulgences from various Bishops, given towards obtaining means for making additions to and alterations in the building, and a few, but late, fabric rolls. Besides these there is a most important document, "A Description or Brief Declaration of all the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customs belonging or being within the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression," apparently written towards the end of the sixteenth century by someone who had been an inmate of the monastery. These form the series of historical evidences which now exist with regard to the dates of the various parts of the church.

In 1093, on August 11, the foundation-stones of the new church were laid, the foundations themselves having been dug on the preceding July 29. Aldhun’s church, as Symeon tells us, had been previously destroyed. There were then present Bishop William of St. Carileph; Turgot, Prior of the monastery, afterwards Bishop at St. Andrews; and, as other writers say, Malcolm, King of Scotland. The continuator of Symeon says that, on the accession of Flambard, he found the church finished as far as the nave. This statement does not, of course, imply that the whole of this was the work of Carileph, for the monks after his death had carried on the building of the church; but it appears on the whole probable that, with the exception of the west side of the transepts and the vaulting of the choir, all the church up to the point mentioned had been built before the death of Carileph.

It may be well to give here a general description of the Norman work, taking the nave first, as being the most important feature in the whole great scheme. The nave consists of three double compartments, a single bay westward of these, and the western bay flanked by the towers. The principal piers consist of triple shafts, placed on each face of a central mass, square in plan; the shafts rest on massive bases of cruciform plan, having a flat projecting band about the middle and a narrow plinth at the bottom. A similar band and plinth are carried beneath the wall-arcades of the nave and transepts and entirely round the church on the outside. In the choir, however, except on the piers of the tower arch, the bases are without a band, but have a plinth of greater height, the responds on the aisle walls being similar. The triple shafts next the nave or choir rise almost to the top of the triforium, and support the great transverse arches of the vault. The shafts next the aisles receive the diagonal and transverse ribs of the aisle vault, and the shafts on the two remaining faces receive the arches of the great arcade. The intermediate piers, in the centre of each double compartment, are circular in plan, and stand on square bases. The western pair of piers, at the corners of the towers, are clustered like the other main piers, but have two additional shafts (like the crossing piers), but these shafts on the side next the nave receive the diagonal ribs of the vault, whereas the additional shafts on the crossing piers support the outer order of the tower arches.

The triforium is of eight bays, having a containing arch with two sub-arches, the tympanum being solid. The clerestory has in each of its eight bays a lofty and wide arch with a smaller and lower one on each side, the central arch having a window fronting it. It has a wall passage which connects it with the clerestories on the west side of the transepts. The inner arcade in the eastern bays appears to be an insertion, possibly made when the vault was put on the nave. The idea of vaulting the nave was apparently abandoned, when the triforium stage was reached, and it is probable that the arrangement of the nave clerestory was at first not unlike that of the south transept. The resumption of the vaulting idea thus necessitated an alteration in the design of the clerestory.

The nave is covered a double quadripartite vault over each double compartment, without transverse ribs over the minor piers. The great transverse arches, which spring from the major piers, are pointed. The diagonal ribs, which rise from corbels inserted in the spandrils of the triforium arches, are semicircular. They are all decorated with zigzag.