Memorials of old Durham

by Unknown

When he at length retired to Finchale he seems to have found there the remains of some ancient building, perhaps of a Roman villa, which may have given its name to the place, and which may not only have formed a sufficient residence for the hermit but for the other members of his family who came to reside with him. The site of this dwelling was a little nearer to Durham than is the present Priory, and the lands around were a hunting-ground (the villa may have been a hunting-lodge) belonging to Bishop Ralph Flambard who gave Godric permission to settle here, so that possession must have been taken before 1128, the date of the Bishop’s death. Adjoining to this residence he seems to have built a wooden chapel which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and about twenty years after he built another of stone which was consecrated by Bishop William de St. Barbara, dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre and St. John Baptist, and regularly served by a priest from Durham. As well as the many self-imposed mortifications he endured, he was much troubled by the serpents with which the place abounded, but which, at his command, departed; but if we may believe the equally veracious story of "the loathly worm of Lambton," a witch as well as a saint had a hand in that achievement.

Godric, who was bedridden with rheumatism, the result of his senile excesses, for eight years before his death, died in 1170, during the episcopacy of Bishop Hugh de Puiset, or Pudsey, who appears to have personally interested himself in the Finchale oratory; and under his directions two monks from the Durham convent, named Henry and Reginald, took up their residence in the place. In 1180 Pudsey confirmed the priory of Durham in their possession of Finchale and added lands and other benefactions to those already granted by Flambard; and thus no doubt the attention of his son Henry was drawn to the place.

Henry de Pudsey, who may be regarded as the founder of Finchale, was Bishop Pudsey’s eldest illegitimate son, and must have been born some long time before his father succeeded to the see as the Bishop had other children younger than Henry. His mother was Adelaide de Percy from whom he appears to have inherited a good deal of land in Craven, as well as the manors of Wingate and Haswell, with which he afterwards endowed Finchale. At some period not long before the death of Godric he seems to have been engaged in founding a small establishment for Austen Canons at a place called Bakstanford not far from Neville’s Cross to which the monks of Durham seem to have objected as an intrusion of a foreign order within their immediate sphere of influence. Whether it was in consequence of their protests or at the wish of his father is uncertain, but he suspended his operations and transferred his endowments to Finchale; and there he erected new monastic buildings for the accommodation of a colony of Benedictines from Durham who, under Thomas the Sacrist as Prior, took possession of the convent in 1196, a year after the death of Bishop Pudsey. It was apparently the intention also of Henry to rebuild Godric’s church in a more suitable manner, but in 1198 he became involved in some political troubles and went crusading in 1201 from which he did not return until 1212; and he left the rebuilding of the church to be carried out by the community.

Piscina in Choir.

The building of a new church seems to have been taken in hand in 1242, a year memorable in the annals of Durham Cathedral as the one which saw the beginning of the great eastern transept of the "Nine Altars," under the auspices of Prior Thomas of Melsamby, of whom Canon Greenwell says: "He was one of the greatest men who have sat in the prior’s chair at Durham." The subservient position which Finchale held to the Durham convent necessitated the assent of its Prior to so important an undertaking; and it is not improbable that he may have pointed out the necessity of the work and that his architect, Richard de Farnham, was responsible for the design. Although of but modest dimensions for a priory church, and but little longer and wider than the chapel which the Brus family had recently built near by at Hartlepool, it was still on too ambitious a scale for the limited resources of the convent; and the work dragged on for a number of years, and was never completed in its entirety. Its chief internal dimensions were—total length of nave and choir 194 feet and of the transepts 99 feet; the widths of the nave and choir were 23 feet and of the transepts 21 feet, while the width across the unbuilt aisles would have been 52 feet. But the aisles would seem never to have been finished, and though Mackensie Walcot pathetically says that "it was the hand of the monk which pulled down the chapel of the transept and the aisles of the choir and nave" it seems more than likely that they were never begun, and that the idea was abandoned for lack of funds soon after the nave and choir arcades had been completed. It is probable that the choir only was roofed in in a temporary manner, and that the nave and perhaps the transepts as well were not enclosed until the works were seriously resumed in the next century. The wars with Scotland caused much trouble within the county of Durham, and doubtless affected the revenues of the priory, although there is nothing to show that the monks were disturbed in any way by the invaders; but twice the Scotch armies appeared upon the Wear, first under the Douglas just before the treaty of Northampton made in 1328, and again in 1346 when they were defeated at the Battle of Neville’s Cross within sight of the cathedral.

All works were suspended at Durham as well as at Finchale for the same reasons, but with the return of peace and under the energetic sway of Prior John Fossor they were resumed; and no doubt under his direct

Choir.

influence and perhaps with his assistance the completion of the church at Finchale was undertaken. The account rolls of the priory from 1348 begin to mention large quantities of material bought for the works and money expended upon labour until 1372 when we may consider the fabric of the church was finished. Instead of building the aisles as originally intended, they filled up the moulded arches of the arcades with walling in which they inserted traceried windows; and they seemed to have roofed in the buildings at a level but little above the top of the arches without any clerestory but sufficiently high to clear the great arches of the crossing. Whether the crossing was vaulted is not quite certain, but some stones found among the ruins seem to indicate remains of groin ribs, and it was raised as a low tower, and covered in all probability with a squat, leaded spire such as those which once stood on the western towers of the cathedral. The windows which had their heads filled in with reticulated tracery were, with those of Easington Church and those inserted in the cathedral by Prior Fossor, among the most important Decorated work in the county. The east end of the choir had originally three lancet windows, but either at this time or later a large traceried window was inserted in their place, the cost of reglazing which appears in the accounts for 1488. A reredos to the high-altar was erected about 1376 during the period when the great Neville screen was in course of construction in the cathedral. The exact position it occupied in the choir is not now evident, as the position of the original double piscina (see p. 135) and the sedilia left but little room for such an erection, and it seems to have involved some alteration in the arrangements of the east end. It is clear from existing remains that it was originally intended to build a chapel on the east side of the north transept and possibly a corresponding one to the south transept, the former with an altar dedicated to St. Godric and the latter to the Blessed Virgin, but these chapels were abandoned at the completion; the whole south transept became the Lady Chapel, and it has been suggested that the shrine of St. Godric was removed to the extreme east end of the choir, from which it was cut off by the new reredos, in which case another piscina which has disappeared must have been made for the service of the high-altar. The ancient sedilia of which there were three were cut into and reduced to two when the large traceried window was inserted in the south wall of the choir, and our illustration (see p. 137) shows not only this alteration but what is supposed to have been the base of the reredos.