In the chapter-house on the east side the monks met the Prior between five and six o’clock "every night there to remain in prayer and devotion" during that time. Here also at other times they assembled in chapter to regulate all matters connected with the life within the body, and to order the many transactions which as a great corporation the convent necessarily had with the world without. Close by, on the one side of the chapter-house, out of which it opened, was the prison, where for minor offences a monk was confined; and on the other side was the passage through which his body was conveyed to his last home in the cemetery beyond.

Opening out of the dormitory to the east, at its south end, where a modern doorway has replaced the earlier one, is a room which was called by the monks "the loft," and which forms, in connection with the refectory, the south side of the cloister. It was the place where the monks, with the Subprior presiding, ordinarily dined, having beneath it what was once the cellar of the convent. Beyond this, to the east, was the refectory, or frater-house, standing above the early crypt which has already been described, where the Prior and monks dined together on March 20—St. Cuthbert’s Day. Whatever it was before then, though possibly the original building still remained, in part at least, unaltered, it was entirely reconstructed by Dean Sudbury (1662-84), who made it into the library, transferring the books from the old library adjoining to the chapter-house, and filling it with the handsome and commodious oak cases which now furnish it. Near to it, on the south-west, is the kitchen of the monastery, now attached to the deanery, an octagonal building which well deserves examination.

Returning to the cloister, there may still be seen at the centre of the garth what is left above ground of the lavatory. It was originally an octagonal structure, the upper part being occupied as a dovecote. The basin was begun in 1432, and completed the next year. The marble stones of the basin, which still exists, were brought from Eggleston-on-the-Tees, of the Abbot of which monastery they were bought. The basin is not in situ, but has at some time been removed from its original situation, "over against the frater-house door," where the foundations of a circular, or octagonal, building were discovered in 1903, and with them those of an earlier building, square in form, with the substructure of an earlier basin.

Before concluding the description of the church, it is necessary that a few words should be said about the exterior. It has charms of its own which, in spite of the disasters it has undergone in the shape of paring down and refacing, still makes it one of our noblest churches.

It must be admitted that, on account of the removal of some inches from the surface of the stone,[10] and the consequent curtailment of mouldings in their projections and hollows, there is a want of light and shade which much detracts from its effect when seen near at hand.

Indeed, the first impression made is perhaps one of disappointment. The east end is especially flat and bald, and with its ill-designed modern pinnacles forms but a poor clothing to the wondrous beauty which is to be seen within the Nine Altars. But with all these drawbacks, when viewed as a whole, and when distance has lent its compensating power, the cathedral, its lofty central tower rising in harmonious combination with the two western ones, stands sublime in its grand outline, and fitly crowns the hill of Durham.

FINCHALE PRIORY
By J. Tavenor-Perry

AFTER the Romans had completed the subjection of the Brigantes they constructed a great military road through the centre of their country from Eburicum, which became the capital of the province, to the Tweed and the country beyond. This road intersected the county of Durham from north to south, and much of its course can still be traced from its point of entry at Pierce Bridge, through Vinovium or Binchester in Auckland, Epiacum or Lanchester, and Vindomora or Ebchester where it passes over the Derwent into Northumberland. From Binchester a branch road led by way of Chester-le-Street to the Pons Ælii or Newcastle, which was continued by another branch to Jarrow and South Shields passing along the south bank of the Tyne. This great military road and the branch to Newcastle were cut through the dense forest which then covered the whole of Durham and which continued through Saxon times to form an almost impassable boundary, save by these roads, between the closely associated provinces of Deira and Bernicia. The considerable remains of the Roman towns still standing after the conquest of Northumbria by the Angles were no doubt occupied by them as settlements; and we find it stated in the life of St. Cuthbert that when he was crossing the wild country of Durham and was like to be starved he found succour from someone residing in the buildings still remaining at Chester-le-Street. Along the sides of the roads, between the towns, would be the ruins, not then entirely destroyed, of villas and other buildings which may have formed places for rest or refuge to those who like the saint traversed these dangerous forest paths, from which may have been derived the names of localities still in use although the ruins after which they were called have long since been forgotten. The monks who were conveying the body of St. Cuthbert to its final resting-place were directed to take it to Dunholm, and an accident revealed to them the obscure place which then bore that name; and when St. Godric was directed to repair to Finchale and there build himself a hermitage, he only discovered there was a place so called by a chance conversation he had with a monk at Durham.

The name of Finchale must have been well known in the ninth century if we accept the common and reasonable belief that it was a place of meeting of two or three important councils concerned with the affairs of Northumbria. Its position in reference to the great road passing to the South, its accessibility to the neighbouring town of Chester-le-Street only three or four miles distant, and its comparative seclusion in the great surrounding forest made it particularly suitable for such meetings, which were held, as Bishop Stubbs says in his Constitutional History, generally on the confines of states whence those assembled might easily retire at nightfall to safer places. The councils held in Northumbria during the latter part of the eighth century met at a time when the country was not only disturbed by internal troubles, but already threatened by the Danish pirates along the coast; and the forest depths of Durham were safer for such meetings than the more open lands of Northumberland or Yorkshire. The affix of "hale," the Saxon "hal," signifies the existence of a hall or some building, perhaps the remains of a Roman villa, which would have served as a temporary shelter for the members of a council, of which all traces have long since disappeared; but, taking all the circumstances together, we may fairly assume that Finchale was the place in which these Northumbrian councils met, and the name still lingered in the locality when St. Godric established himself within its glades on the banks of the rushing Wear.

This Godric, whose name is indissolubly associated with Finchale Priory, although he was in no sense the founder of it, was as selfish and dirty an old anchorite as ever attained the brevet rank of sainthood. Born about 1065, the first thirty years of his life were spent as a pedlar and sailor, during which he travelled far and wide, and met with many adventures; and the remainder he spent in pilgrimages or a hermit-life of penance and prayer. The Dictionary of National Biography gives a very complete history of him, compiled from all available sources, the most important being the MS. life by his contemporary Nicholas of Durham. While he was leading the roving life of a pedlar he was nearly drowned in trying to catch a porpoise, and afterwards made a pilgrimage to Rome, presumably in thankfulness for his rescue. But the time was unfortunate, for it appears to have been about 1086, when Gregory VII., Hildebrand, had just died in exile, when the Anti-Pope Clement III. was in possession of the Vatican, while the newly elected Pope Victor III. was afraid to enter Rome, which then lay sunk in the most frightful anarchy. The spectacle he beheld could scarcely then have induced him to accept a religious vocation; and we find that for sixteen years afterwards he led a seafaring life, trading between England, Scotland, Flanders and Denmark, presently going so far afield as the Holy Land, where the Chronicler’s description of him as "Gudericus pirata de regno Angliae" sufficiently indicates the character of his occupation. Returning thence, he paid a visit to the shrine of St. James of Compostella; and when he reached home he accepted a menial position in the house of a countryman, which suggests that he had not made much money by his ventures. But with a restless spirit on him he went two more pilgrimages to Rome, and the second time he took his mother with him carrying her, it is said, on his shoulders where the way was difficult. It was on this journey that he was accompanied by a lady of wondrous beauty, whom he met on his way in London, who left him there again on his return, and who nightly washed his feet; a story which perhaps grew out of the custom of noble ladies, and which became more common later on, of washing the feet of pilgrims in penance for some special sin, in the manner described by Charles Reade in The Cloister and the Hearth. On his return, somewhere about 1104, he settled for a time at Carlisle, and then went to share his cell with a hermit named Aelrice, by Wolsingham, and perhaps learn the lessons which were to guide him in his future life. After a stay here of only seventeen months the hermit died, and directed, he believed, by St. Cuthbert, Godric went again on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after which he was instructed to return and take up his residence at Finchale. Not knowing the locality by name he returned to Durham where he resided for some time until a chance conversation disclosed the whereabouts of the place.