The place can hardly have been other than an anker’s den. And it must surely have been one of the least commodious. It is remarkable that so few such have been identified, for the numbers of ankers in England must at one time have been considerable. There is a good deal about them in the second volume of the new edition of Mr. Bloxam’s Gothic Architecture, and Mr. Bloxam would assign to ankers most of the habitable chambers attached to churches, over vestries and porches and elsewhere. Very likely some such were used by ankers of the easier sort: but I think more were occupied by secular clerks and chaplains, and the anker’s place was a hut built outside against the wall, under the eaves of the church, as is said in the thirteenth-century Ancren Riwle, which tells us more about ankers than any other book I know of.
A cell was so placed that the anker need not leave it, either for worship or for any other reason. There was a window opening through which he might join in the worship at the altar, and at times receive the sacrament. And there was another window or hatch to the outside through which necessaries might be received and conversation held with visitors or servants. A window or squint is often found from a chamber over a vestry towards the high altar, and there is sometimes one from a porch chamber: but being on upper floors they could not well have the other window, so I take most of them not to have been ankerholds. Though as the degree of strictness varied much and seems for the most part to have been fixed only by the anker himself, it is possible that some may have been so used. The anker of the strictest sort was inclusus—permanently shut up in his cell which he entered with the license and blessing of the bishop. Such an one could scarcely have inhabited an upper chamber. Whether our Bengeo Anker was inclusus or not is uncertain. The entrance to his cell had no door, but it may have been blocked, and a squint or loop towards the altar formed the blocking. If it were open a curtain must have been hung across it, perhaps a black cloth with a white cross like that ordered in the Riwle to be put to the ‘parlour’ window.
The recess in the church wall west of the doorway is the anker’s seat and perhaps his sleeping place. And his bones may lie below: for it seems to have been a custom for ankers to prepare their own graves within their cells.”
APPENDIX VIII
THE MONASTIC HOUSES
List of Religious Houses and Parish Churches
The religious Houses and Churches of the City and its suburbs which existed in the fifteenth century are enumerated in Arnold’s Chronicle. Arnold, who lived and wrote towards the end of the fifteenth century, belongs to Mediæval London, which Stow, of a hundred years later, certainly did not. We shall adopt, therefore, from Arnold’s list, as a guide to this survey of Mediæval London, the Churches and ecclesiastical foundations which he considers as especially belonging to London. His own spelling is followed here.
- Seint Martin’s Graunte
- Cryst Chirche
- The Chartur hous
- Elsyngspitel
- Seynt Barthū Priory
- Seynt Barthū Spitel
- Seynt Thom̄s of Acres
- Seint Antonis
- Seynt Johēs in Smythfeld
- Clerkenwell Nonry
- Halywelle Nonry
- Barmondsay Abbey
- Seint Mary Ouery Priory
- Seint Thom̄s Spitel
- Saint Giles in the Felde
- Seynt Helen’s Nonry
- Seynt Mary Spitel
- Seynt Mary at Beethelem
- The Menures Nonry
- Seynt Anne at the Tourhil
- Seynt Katerins
- The Crouched Fryers
- The Friers Augustines
- The Fryours Mynors
- The Fryours P’chars
- Seynt James in the Wall
- The Whit Fryers
- Seint Peter at Westm̄ Abbey
- Seynt James in the Temple
- Seynt Stephenys at Westminster
- Seint Thom̄s Chapel of the Bridge
- Seynt James in the Fields
- Seynte Mary Magdalene Yeldhall
- Seynt Mary Rouncyuale
- Seynt Ursula chapel in the Poultry