Itchen Abbas, Hampshire

St John the Baptist, open, was an accidental visit - I couldn't find Avington - church that is not the village - and was running out of petrol so abandoned my planned visits to return home. My route took me past the church so I automatically stopped for a visit. TBH there's not a lot of interest here but it was nice to find it open.

ITCHEN ABBAS. The pathway to its Georgian church was lined with roses when we called, and it brings us to a giant that may be the oldest thing we see here, an ancient yew of great beauty, about 25 feet round the trunk. Hale and hearty still, this marvel of Itchen Abbas has for companion another lovely tree, one rarely found in graveyards, a graceful walnut. We do not wonder that Charles Kingsley loved to come to this village of clear streams, green meadows, and noble trees.

In one of these fields is all that is left of the home of a Roman family. After the Romans came the Normans, and they gave the church its west doorway and its chancel arch, and a style the modern builders have copied. In the sanctuary is a tablet to Robert Wright, who was rector for the first 50 years of the 19th century; and hiding in the porch are memorials to the two sons and the grand-daughter of an 18th century rector who was Dean of Chichester. All died young, one boy from a lingering illness, the other snatched away by a fever in the same year, and the girl with all the beauty of youth still about her. The charming lychgate was set up in 1933 in memory of a father and a mother. There are four consecration crosses.

In the churchyard is the grave of John Hughes, who was hanged at Westminster for horse stealing, and is said to be the last man in England hanged for that offence.

It was this corner of Hampshire, his biographer tells us, which became as ‘dear to Lord Grey of Fallodon as' Fallodon itself, and here for a full generation he enjoyed the wild life of the countryside on half an acre of land, on which he built a small cottage. It was his weekend place, and he used to say that he paid his rent in the form of bread thrown on to the grass for the birds in front of his sitting-room window. Here he would come when the worries of Parliament drove him to seek relief, and it was here that he wrote in 1895 “I shall never be in office again, and the days of my stay in the House of Commons are probably numbered.” All the world knows that 20 years after this he stood by Mr Asquith’s side when these two old friends stood for the spirit of England in its darkest hours.

Once he wrote to his wife from here that he felt as if his heart was too full and might burst:

I feel as if I must come in every half-hour to write to you. I have been on the bridge and eaten my figs on it and thrown the stalks into the river. I can hardly breathe for the sacredness of the place.

Another time he was disappointed that the birds did not come to him freely; he had seen only seven out of the twelve sorts that should have come, and he felt “as offended as a Sovereign whose levee has been badly attended, and as anxious as a parent whose children have stayed out too late.”

In those bitter years when the storm of adversity seemed as if it would not cease about him, one of the blows came from this place so beloved. In 1917 Fallodon was burnt to the ground; in 1923 his post brought him a pathetic letter from the woman who looked after his cottage at Itchen Abbas:

My lord, what can I say to you? I am sore vexed, but your pretty cottage is burnt to the ground. What will you say, my lord?

It was the end of the Hampshire weekends which had brought relief to the man who for so long bore the burden of our Foreign Office on his shoulders.

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Wilton, Wiltshire - SS Mary & Nicholas

SS Mary & Nicholas, open [Jenkins **], is an extraordinary C19th new build in the Italianate style. I arrived in a downpour and the weather conditions meant it was almost pitch dark inside - not ideal but I found some light switches [though only for the west end] and made do. It did slowly begin to let up outside but on the whole I'd recommend visiting on a bright day. It feels very Catholic and is seriously over the top but I liked it a lot, especially the apse mosaics.

St MARY AND ST NICHOLAS. Built in 1841-5 by Thomas Henry Wyatt & D. Brandon for the Rt Hon. Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War, at a cost of £20,000. The church is a tour de force in the Rundbogenstil, the round-arch style, to use a German term for a style revived particularly in Germany, first by Schinkel and then by others. It had a vogue in England in the forties, and a measure of Wilton’s international prominence in the style is the fact that it was described in the Allgemeine Bauzeirung of Vienna. The term ‘round-arch style’ is appropriate; for it could take the shape of Early Christian, Byzantine, Italian Romanesque, or indeed Norman. At Wilton we are faced with the Italian Romanesque. The symptoms are unmistakable: twisted columns in the main portal standing on recumbent lions; friezes below the eaves climbing up and down them in the facade; a big rose window; an isolated campanile. The basilican appearance on the other hand is generally Early Christian to Italian Romanesque. The church is remarkably high, and the campanile reaches a height of 108 ft. It is connected with the church by a playful little gallery of richly decorated colonnettes. Rich also is the carving of the portals. The apse is lower than the chancel, has shafts reaching right up it, and incidentally faces the green of the estate. The interior is certainly monumental, with its erect proportions and its open timber roof. The proud columns have capitals carved by William Osmond Jun. of Salisbury. Above them a kind of triforium, of eight little arches for each bay, not at all an archaeologically correct motif. The chancel is divided from the nave by very tall black marble columns. It is groin-vaulted. There are also chancel aisles ending in apses. Their W arches have black columns too, and they are original ancient Roman pieces from the Temple of Venus at Porto Venere (C2 B.C.). The chancel aisles are divided from the chancel by a tripartite colonnade, again not a correct motif. The mosaic pavement in the chancel is by Mr Singer, the very Italian mosaics of chancel and apse by Gertrude Martin, the chancel colouring and patterning by Willement, the side apse mosaics by Gertrude Martin to the design of Sir Charles Nicholson. Heavy W gallery forming two sham ambones round the first columns. Doorways flanked by twisted columns with stone mosaic. Of the same type the CANDLESTICKS in the main and the S apse. All these columns are genuine Cosmati work. But the NW doorway has thick black marble barley-sugar columns instead. The PULPIT stands on a forest of black marble columns with excellently carved capitals. The upper colonnettes are again of Cosmati work and from the same source as those in the chancel. Sidney Herbert bought for 47 guineas at the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842 the so-called Shrine of Capoccio which William Hamilton had acquired in 1768 and presented to Horace Walpole. It dates from 1256 and was at S. Maria Maggiore. The Shrine of Capoccio had been made fit for display in Horace Walpole’s chapel by John Augustus Richter in 1774, and some of his work ought also to be traceable.* Moreover, the journal of the Brit. Arch. Ass., xv, reports that some twisted columns came from Palermo. The church ought to be investigated properly with full use of the Pembroke archives.

FONT. Of Italian marbles, more sensuous in shape than the rest. The font is called ‘of ancient Italian workmanship’ in The Illustrated London News, 4 August 1849. - PULPIT. See above. - READING DESK. With Flemish (Spanish?) Baroque reliefs. - DOORS. The doors have old wood panels: Early-Renaissance English (N chancel aisle), Flemish C16 (N aisle), Flemish C16 and others (W doors). STAINED GLASS. An amazing collection of pieces from the Continent and England, starting with the wonderful panels in the apse. The centre panel, part of one large figure, comes from the clerestory of a French later C12 cathedral, the other panels are French C13 glass.** So is one group in the N apse. Also in the N apse fine early C14 angels. Then there is German C14 glass, badly preserved, in the N aisle NE window, English C15 glass in the S apse, English mid C16 glass from the chapel of the first Earl of Pembroke’s house in the S aisle SW window (kneeling donors), and German and Flemish glass in the N aisle NW window. The figure of God the Father came from Malines, is attributed to Arnold van Nijmegen, and belongs to a group the rest of which is at St George’s Hanover Square (from Antwerp). Excellent German Pieta below. In the W rose window the glass is mostly C19, but there is also German C16 glass. In the vestry Netherlandish C16 and C17 roundels. Of C19 glass TK mentions in the N wall glass by O'Connor, 1853, at the SE end by Wailes 1847 and Gibbs & Howard 1882. - PLATE. Paten, 1683. - MONUMENTS. John Coffer d. 1585. Small brass plate with kneeling figure (N aisle). - William Sharp d. 1626. Kneeling figures above the N aisle NW door. Children below, but the whole not in its original state. - Ninth Earl of Pembroke d. 1749. Big grey base and bust on top. - Elizabeth Countess of Pembroke, by Rossi, 1793, with a delicate relief, partly schiacciato. - Tenth Earl d. 1794. Designed by James Wyatt and carved by Westmacott Sen. A severe sarcophagus and nothing else. - Eleventh Earl d. 1827. By Sir Richard Westmacott. A beautiful relief with a Holy Family and a Grecian Shepherd. Portrait bust in relief in a medallion at the top. - Lord Herbert of Lea and the Countess of Pembroke, his mother, the founders of the church, d. 1861 and 1856. Recumbent white effigies on tomb-chests. Designed by Wyatt and carved by John Birnie Philip.

* Professor Julian Gardner has recently identified the following pieces as parts of the original shrine: two colonnettes framing the sacristy door; two colonnettes free-standing in the apse; two architraves (used upright) flanking the doorway to the N porch; two of the panels in the apse; four of the colonnettes in the pulpit. Some of the other Cosmati work at Wilton may come from the sides of the shrine. See I . Gardner, Papers of the British School at Rom, xxxvrn, 1970, 220.

** Professor Grodecki has made it probable that a prophet in this window belonged to a scene from the Childhood of Christ at St Denis Abbey.

Wilton. Once the capital of Wiltshire and of Wessex, it has lost that high distinction, and today, an hour’s walk from Salisbury, although it still has the carpet industry that has made its name famous, it is a quiet place with three things for the traveller to see. There is one of the very greatest treasure-houses in England, Wilton House, the home of the Pembrokes for many generations; there is the chancel of the old church, off the marketplace, which has been brightened and given a new lease of life after being long neglected and forlorn; and there is a modern church not like any other we have seen, a Byzantine structure a little over-splendid, a gorgeous example of the architecture of the Victorian Era, built regardless of cost.

For nearly seven centuries Wilton was the seat of one of the four most important nunneries in England the other three were Barking, Shaftesbury, and Winchester - whose abbesses were peeresses of the realm though being women they had no seat in the House of Lords. It stood on the site of Wilton House but the only visible remains are to be found in some outbuildings nearby.

The old church has been restored and hallowed as a place of rest in memory of Robert Bingham, the American ambassador, and his ancestor Robert de Bingham, second Bishop of New Sarum, who was consecrated here 700 years ago.

The remarkable new church is raised above the street on steps 100 feet wide, with a tower 100 feet high linked with it by a cloister. Its west front (which is not really west, for the church is one of the very few not laid out east-to-west) has three deeply recessed round arches, the central one with four orders of moulding and pillars resting on lions. Inside everything is remarkably rich. There is much mosaic, rich carving on capitals, fine marble monuments, mosaic chancel steps, a sanctuary floor of agate and marble, an enamel chalice covered with scenes and figures by a 12th century craftsman, two massive monoliths brought from Italy, and two twisted marble pillars which were part of a shrine in Rome in the 13th century and in the 18th century in the collection of Horace Walpole.

The monuments, an interesting group, have often the high quality of genius. There is a lovely white figure of Lord Herbert on a black marble tomb sculptured with scenes from his life, and near him is a lovely sleeping figure of his mother. There are sculptures by. Rossi and Westmacott, one of the Countess of Pembroke with a mourning woman over an urn, the other a big wall sculpture to George Augustus Herbert, showing a beggar with his dog, a woman with her child, and a man leaning on his staff, a symbol of charity and good works. Over the cloister door is a Jacobean monument of William Sharp kneeling with his wife, their three children below in tiny recesses. There is a marble bust of the ninth Earl of Pembroke and a brass of John Goffer three years older than the Spanish Armada.

Among much ancient glass the most extraordinary piece is a panel brought from Wilton House with the arms of Philip and Mary, a piece of heraldry rarely met with in a church window. In the same window is a portrait of the Earl of Pembroke and his countess with their two sons and a daughter kneeling. The east window has some pieces of glass among the oldest in England, 12th or 13th century; the picture of Stephen is supposed to be 1200. In this window is St Nicholas, the Flight into Egypt, the wedding feast at Cana, the driving-out from the Temple, and Gethsemane. Other glass is from St Chapelle in Paris. The east windows of both chancel aisles have also rich old glass, much of it 13th century, and many of the fiigures are quaint and charming. There is an old Venetian chest, a wheel window showing the Flight of Time, and a reading desk with old Flemish carving.

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Mere, Wiltshire

St Michael the Archangel, open [Jenkins ***], is a funny one; its got many elements that I like - brasses, misericords, a Christopher Webb window and ancestral connections, the two brasses memorialise John Betteshorne and John Berkeley 17th and 16th times great grandfathers - and yet I was left feeling ambivalent about it. I certainly wouldn't rate it as highly as Jenkins does but, at the same time, don't have enough experience of the county's vernacular to pass judgement. As it was open I think I'm going to have to come down in favour of it.

ST MICHAEL. A big, solid church away from the main street. The exterior is mostly Dec and of much visual variety. The chancel is of C13 date, partly early (buttresses and corbel-table), partly later (one two-light window with bar tracery which now looks into the N chapel, and the small single-chamfered doorway below it). Of the C13 also, apparently re-used, the fine large pointed-trefoiled niche with shafts in the S chapel. The Dec work is lavish and extensive. The N chapel was built as a chantry c.1325, but extended later in the C14, the S chapel was built, also as a chantry, c.1350. The N side has straight-headed windows of interesting tracery. Towards the W arches standing upside down on arches, towards the E ogee arches standing upside down on ogee arches. Only the E window is Perp, as is the chancel E window. The S aisle windows are also straight-headed, but have the more usual reticulation motifs. The chapel has flowing tracery to the S and to the E a Perp window re-lacing a Dec one to which the hood-mould with heads belongs. Lavish Dec N porch of two storeys. Niche above the entrance. Vault with a tierceron-star and bosses. The S porch is simpler and much rebuilt, but has a Dec doorway inside as well, whereas the N doorway is Perp. W tower with the lower part of its E wall probably of the CII. The rest Perp with polygonal buttresses ending in turret pinnacles (cf. Marlborough). Decorated battlements, three-light bell-openings. Ceiling inside with traceried panels, over-restored. The total height of the tower is 124 ft. Now the rest of the interior. Here the arcades of the chancel chapels have preserved their Dec appearance. Octagonal pier and arches with two sunk quadrant mouldings. The arch from the S chapel to the aisle corresponds in style; only the arch from the chapel to the W is Perp. On the E walls of the aisles one can clearly see that at the time the chapels were built the aisles were still lower and narrower. The aisle walls were then widened, and in the end the present aisle arcades were built - purely Perp. Five bays, tall piers with four shafts and four hollows, corresponding arches. The clerestory also is Perp. So is the panelled chancel arch. Single-framed nave roof, only the bay above the rood panelled with leaf enrichment in the centre of each panel. The angels along the wall plate are nearly all new. They hold the Instruments' of the Passion. 

FURNISHINGS. FONT. Octagonal, Perp, of Purbeck marble. Shields in cusped quatrefoils. - ROOD SCREEN. A spectacular Perp piece, very tall, of six-light divisions with transom and tracery below it as well as in the head. The original doors are preserved. Coving and loft are not original. - CHAPEL SCREENS. The finest that to the S chapel Tall, with eight-light divisions, articulated by mullions of different gauge. One arch for the middle eight lights, half-arches l. and r. The N chapel screen was the same, but has been cut down. The S chapel W screen simpler, with one-light divisions, but also good. - STALLS, with MISERICORDS. On the N side four angels, two of them recent copies; on the S side a man putting his tongue out, a flower, a bearded head, a leaf, an angel. - On two of the stall  ends are the arms of Gylbert Kymer, rector of Mere in 1449-63. - BENCHES. Simple, of 1638-41, with three knobs at each end, the middle one raised by a semicircle with a shell. - COMMUNION RAIL (S aisle E). C18. - SCULPTURE. Alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi; C15 (chancel, N wall). - TILES. Some C14 tiles in the S chapel. - STAINED GLASS. In the S chapel SW window excellent Dec glass, including older figures in their characteristic colours. - The N aisle W window by Powell’s, 1865, designed by Holiday. Excellent, in the Pre-Raphaelite style, but with the big canopies usual in the C14. - (S aisle W window. Medallion by Holiday. R. Hubbuck) - PLATE. Chalice, given in 1630; Flagon and Paten, 1699-1700; Chalice given in 1700; Flagon and Paten, 1700; two Patens, 17I3(?). - MONUMENTS. Brass to Sir John Betteshorne d. 1398, ‘fundator istius cantarie’, in the floor of his, i.e. the S, chapel, a 4 ft 3 in. figure. - Brass to a Knight, S chapel, half-hidden, probably Sir John Berkeley of Beverstone d. 1426. The figure must be c. 5 ft 3 in. long. - Between the chancel and the s chapel tomb-chest with three shields in cusped quatrefoils. Between and at the corners panelled bands. This is supposed to commemorate the first Lord Stourton d. 1463. - Nearly all the Georgian tablets have been banished. - Also some funerary ARMOUR (S chapel).

Mere. From the top of its ancient Castle Hill one can look down on three counties, for one stands in Wiltshire at the boundaries of Dorset and Somerset.

A 17th century house holds out the Sign of the Ship, a network of scrolls, spirals, and flowering plants with a crown on top and a bunch of grapes at the end. The inn, like the sign, takes its name from the sailing ship badge of John Mere, who founded a chantry in the church in the 14th century. The house as it stands was built by Sir John Coventry, whom a Parliament of Charles the Second nicknamed Boanerges. Pepys mentions the loud-voiced knight, but his name is tacked to an Act of Parliament because of an incident of which he was a victim. One night he was waylaid in the London streets and had his nostrils slit, the outrage so angering the Commons that an Act was passed imposing the death penalty for such mutilation. It was called the Coventry Act.

A neighbouring inn has a more personal recollection of Charles the Second declaring that he dined there after the Battle of Worcester. It is certain that he slept at Zeals, the handsome house with the black hounds at the gate, half a mile away.

A more gracious memory clings to the Chantry, the long low Tudor house near the church, where old William Barnes the poet kept his small school. Its garden slopes down to a stream which escapes in a noisy fall through the garden wall, and trickles across the elm-shadowed meadow. By this stream the poet would sit with his beloved Petrarch. These lawns he kept trim with his scythe. Here is the sedate old coach house he turned into the workshop where he worked his lathe. These are the walls from which he took the apricots to carry to his friends. This was the haven where he tended the flowers, this the garden to which he bade so tender a farewell when he had to  leave it to seek a better place for his school at Dorchester:

Sweet garden! peaceful spot! no more in thee
Shall I e’er wile away the sunny hour.
Farewell each blooming shrub and lofty tree;
Farewell the mossy path and nodding flower ;
I shall not hear again from yonder bower
The song of birds or humming of the bee,
Nor listen to the waterfall, nor see
The clouds float on behind the lofty tower.

No more at breezy eve or dewy morn
My gliding scythe shall shear thy mossy green;
My busy hands shall never more adorn,
My eyes no more may see this peaceful scene.
But still, sweet spot, wherever I may be,
My love-led soul shall wander back to thee.

The church the 13th century built, keeping some traces of the Saxon masons, was rebuilt with greater opulence in 200 years, when they added the tower in emulation of those for which the west country is famous. The tower is impressive and 100 feet high, with carved parapet, pinnacles, and traceried windows. Inside it has a fine panelled arch and a remarkable ceiling, divided into panels great and small, the larger ones with moulded timbers and handsome bosses, divided again into smaller ones, all filled with delicate designs.

The church is one of the best in Wiltshire, spacious and lofty and light. The nave arcades have pointed arches and clustered columns. The clerestory is lit by traceried windows. The 15th century roof is supported by angels along its cornice, some clad in feathers. Nearly all the pews are resplendent with carving. The font follows the example of the 15th century woodcarvers in sculptured stone.

These are ornaments which many a church can show, but this church is rare in having a chancel completely enclosed by screens. It is surrounded on all sides by exquisite 15th century woodwork, and so lovely in its tracery that it is sufficient of itself to make Mere famous. The main screen has two tiers of open traceried panels and lovely fan-vaulting with the roodloft above as in medieval days. In an upright of one of the side screens is a peephole, and near it is a staple with the last link of a chain once holding a book. The seats of the old misericords are adorned with flowers and heads. Among them is an angel and another has a dragon pushing his way through leaves. Four golden angels stand on four posts, lighting with their candles the beautiful new altar which is the peace memorial.

The south chapel was built by Sir  John Bettishorne in 1350. Old grotesques support the modern roof, and there are fragments of tiles at the altar steps. In one of the fine traceried windows are four medallions of 16th century glass, with colouring subdued but beautiful, showing St Nicholas raising a man from the tomb, St Christopher with the Child, St Martin on a high-stepping white horse halving his cloak with a beggar, and a bishop with a hand raised in blessing. All are set in a background of leaves or flowers. In the middle of the floor, surrounded by a low iron railing, is the fine brass of Sir John himself. He is in armour with chain mail at its joints, gauntlets protected by knobs, and an elaborate belt with a pendant. His sword and dagger are at his side, his feet on a lion. It is a remarkably unblemished brass. Less fine, but still handsome, is the brass of his nephew Sir John Berkeley*, also in armour. 

There are two porches with rooms over them. The great porch has a vaulted roof whose ribs spring from small heads crowned with flowers and meet in bosses. Under a rich canopy at the entrance is St Michael; over the inner doorway is a battered Madonna. In the room over this porch is a queer possession for a church, a tiny piece of trimming from the bed in which Edward the Second was murdered in Berkeley Castle.

The greatest of all possessions of the church, however, is the alabaster carving of the Adoration of the Wise Men. It was found covered with bright paint in one of the gardens below Castle Hill, and is now restored and so highly valued that when we called it had gone away on exhibition. Other treasures are a carved table, some old seats, fragments of stained glass, and a chest of Shakespeare’s day.

Not far from Mere is Woodlands, a manor house of the time of Chaucer, so perfect of its kind, though small, as hardly to be matched. Its great hall is nobly roofed, some of the curved beams meeting in carved cusps. The tall windows, which have carved heads, admit the light to a minstrel gallery with linenfold panelling. Over the porch is a small room which has a big drawing, found on the original plaster wall, of a horse’s head with bridle and a well-arched neck. An adventure began at Woodlands which ended in an Act of Parliament (1755) known as Lord Hardwicke’s Act “for the preventing of clandestine marriages.”

Ridgeway Pitt, son of Thomas Pitt, first Earl of Londonderry and uncle to the great Earl of Chatham, bequeathed Woodlands to his sister Lady Lucy, who was brought up very strictly with her small cousin Miss Cholmondeley, by Miss Cholmondeley’s mother, Lady Essex.

One day the children, aged 13 and 14, were hurrying home late when they were passed by their uncle, who said “What will Lady Essex say to your being out so late!” They were frightened at what Lady Essex might say and expected to be punished. When they met two Westminster boys (the brothers Meyriek whom they knew) they stopped to tell their troubles. The boys suggested that they should all marry and escape to France. So romantic a fancy promised at any rate an escape from punishment, and the plan was accepted, though the ingenious young ladies insisted on first returning home to fetch two toys, a pretty bird which came out of its cage when the door was opened, and a dog that barked when squeezed.

Lady Essex could not have been watching from the window, for everything went well with them. A maid whom they commanded, and who foolishly obeyed them, accompanied them. The plan was carried out, and then events began to move. Lady Essex had been alarmed by  their absence and had made enquiries, and the happy married pairs were seized when boarding a ship for France. In later years their marriages were properly solemnised, and Lady Lucy Pitt became Lady Pierce Meyriek. The Meyricks lived at Woodlands and we may hope they lived happily ever after; but the Act of Parliament which was the epilogue to their adventure put an end to clandestine marriages, invalidated marriages of infants by licence without the consent of parents or guardians, and required the solemnisation of all marriages in churches.

* Actually his son in law.

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Langham, Dorset

Jonathan's last suggestion of the day [excepting Silton which was a photographic disaster as I left my camera in the car overnight and as a result it 'steamed' up rendering all the photos useless] was the utterly charming thatched church of St George, LNK. Add to the thatch not only an apse chancel but either an apse vestry or chapel - most likely a vestry. It's charming.

Mee missed it.

Wimborne, Dorset

Wimborne Minster, open, was an off the cuff visit Jonathan suggested the night before, along with a favourite of his which we will come to shortly. Jenkins, rightly to my mind and it's not often I agree with him, gives it a four star rating but also, again rightly to me, criticises the curious use of differing building materials which lend it the air of a gingerbread church.

It is a magnificent building both inside and out but I have to say that they really need to declutter the interior, the interior is full of ill thought rubbish throughout. I'd also throw out the grumpy old vociferous git in the south aisle who added exactly nothing to the pleasure of the visit. Had it not been the House of God it could have turned nasty!

THE MINSTER. Cuthburga, sister of King Ina, founded a nunnery at Wimborne about 705 of which in the end she became abbess. In the late C10 the Danes destroyed the nunnery. Edward the Confessor revived religious life by creating a college of secular canons. The college was called a deanery under Henry III. Edward II in 1318 declared the church a free chapel, exempt from ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It was dissolved in 1537.

Of the collegiate buildings nothing is preserved, but the church is there in toto - 186 ft long internally. C19 restoration took place in 1857 (T. H. Wyatt) and 1891 (Pearson).

Wimborne Minster, as nowadays one drives round and round it, is imposing, but it is not beautiful. What is it that spoils it? The spotty brown and grey stone in the first place, the competition of crossing tower and W tower in the second, too similar in height, i.e. neither dominating, and too similar in bulk, and the uncouth top of the crossing tower in the third. But imposing the crossing tower is - a mighty tower. And that is where an inspection of the building ought to start.

The CROSSING TOWER, specially spotty in its stonework, has a first stage of windows, two round-headed ones to each side with a blank pointed arch between. The windows are double-shafted. The capitals of the shafts have trumpet and crocket and stiff-leaf forms. So we are late in the C12 here. On the W side the nave roof cuts into that stage. The stage above has intersecting arches, and it is interesting to note that pointed lancet windows fit into the intersections. It was one of the theories of the late C18 and early C19 concerning the origin of the Gothic style that it had come about naturally by means of intersecting arches. Nowadays we know that styles do not come about in that way. All stages together have giant angle shafts with shaft-rings. The tower had a Perp stone spire, and this collapsed in 1600. The decidedly clumsy corbelled-out top with its obelisk pinnacles dates from shortly after.

The TRANSEPTS are Norman too, though the N transept only as far N as the round stair-turret. The extension can be dated to c.1260-70 from the correct, if over-restored, geometrical window tracery. The N window has four lights, two quatrefoiled circles and a larger sexfoiled one at the top. The E and W windows are of two lights only, also with a foiled circle. The S transept is different, first because the SACRISTY with the LIBRARY over, an addition of c.1350, hides its l side, secondly because the S window is of five stepped cusped lancet lights under one arch - i.e. a late C13 motif. The Norman masonry is particularly telling in the bare W wall.

We continue first to the E, then to the W. The EAST END shows the choir projecting by only one shallow bay. The E has three separate uncusped stepped lancets, with sexfoils and quatrefoils in plate tracery. This may be called c.1250. The N choir aisle starts from the transept with one small Norman doorway, earlier obviously than the crossing tower, but, according to the RCHM, re-set. Its tympanum has a concave underside. The windows, with cusped Y-tracery, are C19 (RCHM). The same is said of the stepped lancets in the choir aisle.

So to the NAVE. It is the same both sides, except for the N porch. The aisle windows are first from the E of two lights with bar tracery, i.e. later C13, then, further W, they have cusped Y-tracery, i.e. earliest C14. The clerestory is the first Perp feature we meet. Three lights, a straight top and elementary panel tracery between lights and top.

The NORTH PORCH dates from the late C13 but has a C15 upper storey. The lower storey is rib-vaulted in two bays, the ribs with fillets, the bosses with naturalistic foliage. The wall-shafts are of Purbeck marble. The entrance has continuous mouldings including a fillet, the doorway two continuous chamfers.

The WEST TOWER is forbidding, where the crossing tower is loquacious. It was built from 1448 to 1464, and is 87 ft high. As W doorway and W window are Victorian, it is almost sheer to almost the top. It has polygonal clasping buttresses (cf. Bradford Abbas). The bell-openings are two each side, of two lights with a transom.

So much for the outside; now the INTERIOR. Here again we must begin at the CROSSING, and, as might be expected, because it takes some time to build a crossing tower, the four arches on which it stands are in fact more than a generation older than the rest. In fact the whole crossing as such may go back to the Anglo-Saxon predecessor of the present building. The argument is the extruded outer angles of the crossing piers, the motif also found at Sherborne and e.g. at Stow in Lincolnshire. It means that the crossing was not strictly a crossing of identical chancel, transept, and nave width, but slightly wider in both directions - an Anglo-Saxon illogicality. But even leaving this out of consideration the Norman crossing can hardly be later than, say, 1140. Two shafts rise to the round, single-step arches, depressed W and E, stilted N and S. In addition there are subsidiary single shafts. The capitals have comparatively large and few scallops. The next stage inside has a wall-passage with Purbeck shafts arranged in groups of four lights with round arches under one pointed relieving arch. The top stage inside, corresponding to the lower outside, has shafted windows.

The crossing campaign extended into nave and choir, as we shall soon see. But first the TRANSEPTS. The arch from the N transept into the choir aisle is Dec. But one impost of the Norman arch remains, and next to it, to the N, a perfect Norman altar recess, very simple and totally undramatic. In the W wall is a small Norman doorway. It leads to the tower staircase, which continues high up as a corridor on corbelled courses. The C13 windows are shafted. The S transept has the arch to the choir aisle like the N one, but the Norman recess has been spoilt to become a subsidiary entrance to the aisle. The lancet to its S was blocked when the sacristy and library were built. In the S wall a PISCINA with trefoiled head, the moulding all studded with dogtooth.

There is good reason to continue with the NAVE* rather than the choir: for it is in the nave that the Norman story continues. As a matter of fact Wimborne inside is largely a Norman building, which one would not guess externally. The Norman nave arcades begin from the crossing with a very narrow bay. That, as the scallops and fishscales of the E corbels show, belongs to the crossing, although the single-step arch is pointed. This first bay had to be built to secure the job of carrying up the tower. It acted as W buttresses. The entrances from the transepts to the aisles on the other hand are not now Norman. They have C13 Purbeck shafts with Perp capitals but C13 arches. High up in the nave one can see the former roof-line and in the gable a small Norman window. The next three bays of the arcade start after a short bit of solid wall. They are Late Norman. Round piers, many scalloped capitals, square abaci with nicked corners, higher pointed arches with zigzag, also at r. angles to the wall. On the apexes of the arches human and monster heads. Above, a course of small, shallow zigzag serving to mark the sill of the Norman clerestory windows. Here again bay one is slightly difierent from bays two to four. Above all this is the Perp clerestory. The W respond of this Norman arcade stretch is followed by some wall representing the Norman W wall. An extension took place early in the C14. It was of two bays, but the C15 tower cut into the second of them. The NE impost has ballflower. The piers are octagonal, the arches double-chamfered. The tower arch is very high and has large-scale Perp roll and wave mouldings. In the tower a tierceron-star vault.

The CHOIR starts with a Norman bay with responds like those of the crossing but capitals with small busy decoration. The arches are pointed and single-stepped like those of the nave E bay. Against the wall of the crossing, just as on the W wall, the former roof-line is marked, and in the gable is a small Norman window. The next bay is of the time of the E end: it has three orders of shafts and a triple-chamfered arch. The upper windows are Victorian. Steps lead up now to the high choir. The boundary is marked by giant triple shafts with thick leaf capitals. The E bay towards the choir aisles has Purbeek shafts, including a triple one and beautifully fine mouldings with fillets, again c.1250. Outstandingly good hood mould stops, especially Moses. But surely they must be re-used, as they represent the style of c.1200. Two clerestory windows of c.1250. The three stepped lancets of the E wall are rather wilfully expressed inside by a stringcourse which follows the arches but is blown up then to run round the foiled circles too. Against the S wall of the chancel is a delightful Dec group of PISCINA and SEDILIA, with crocketed ogee gables; but the exuberant finials are Victorian.

That leaves the vaulted separate rooms - the sacristy and the crypt. The SACRISTY has an octopartite rib-vault, the ribs finely moulded, including the Dec sunk-quadrant moulding. The CHAINED LIBRARY above has no architecturally interesting features. The CRYPT is Dec too, but of two dates. The (more attractive) W bay with responds and continuous mouldings with fillets may be of c.1350, for the E part the RCHM suggests c.1340. W bay as well as E bay are of three bays’ width. The two parts are divided by three cusped arches.

FURNISHINGS. From E to W, and N before S.

CHOIR. The STALLS date from 1610. They are medieval in type but have the familiar blank arches on their fronts and foliage on the arms. — The same is true of the READING DESKS. — STAINED GLASS. The middle E window has a Tree of Jesse, Flemish, early C16, brought in, but alas much damaged. — MONUMENTS. King Ethelred, brass demi-figure, 141/2 in. long. Made c.1440. - John Beaufort Duke of Somerset d. 1444. Purbeck tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils. On it two alabaster effigies. — Marchioness of Exeter d. 1557 — yet the same tomb-chest still and not a touch of the Renaissance.

NORTH CHOIR AISLE. STAINED GLASS. The heraldic window is by Willement, 1838. - MONUMENTS. Defaced late C13 Knight. - Sir Edmund Uvedale d. 1606. Standing alabaster monument. He is lying on his side, his pose more relaxed than usual. Two colunms, two obelisks, strapwork and ribbonwork. - Above a funeral HELM.

SOUTH CHOIR AISLE. STAINED GLASS. The heraldic window is by Willement, 1838. - MONUMENTS. William Ettricke d. 1716. Large tablet without figures. - Anthony Etricke, 1693. Black shrine with painted shields.

CROSSING. The majestic stone PULPIT is of 1868; the carving was done by Earp. - The equally majestic brass LECTERN of the eagle type is dated 1623.

NORTH TRANSEPT. The WALL PAINTING in the Norman recess is illegible now. It is of three layers, C13, C14, C15. The two later ones are Crucifixions.

SOUTH TRANSEPT. ORGAN. By J. W. Walker & Sons, 1965. The sound comes only partly through the pipes. Above there is a display of gilded trumpets sticking out, and they convey the sound too — a delightful idea. - A number of TABLETS, the best John Moyle, 1719. There are altogether at Wimborne quite a number of good tablets of the late C17 and early C18. It would take up too much space to describe them all. The best will just be listed as an appeal to examine and compare them.

NORTH AISLE. STAINED GLASS. The second window from the E (1859) must be by Gibbs. - MONUMENT. Thomas Hanham d. 1650. Two kneeling figures facing one another across a prayer-desk. This is a motif of Elizabethan and Jacobean funerary sculpture, but the pediment and the sparse foliage are post-Jacobean. - TABLETS. Harry Constantine d. 1712. - Thomas Cox d. 1730. 

SOUTH AISLE. TABLETS. Bartholomew Lane D. 1679. - William Fitch ‘did in his lifetime cause this marble to be erected’ - 1705. - Warham family, 1746. - George Bethell d. 1782. Trophy at the top, but now also an Adamish oval patera at the foot.

TOWER. FONT. Black Purbeck marble, octagonal, with two blank pointed-trefoiled arches each side. - CLOCK. The case of v.1740. - STAINED GLASS. The W window is by Heaton & Butler; date of death commemorated I852.

PLATE. Cup and Cover, 1604; Cover, 1634; two Cups, 1638; Flagon, 1681.

Outside the building against the bell-openings to the N is the QUARTER JACK, early C19. - In front of the S side of the tower a monumental free-standing SUNDIAL on a high square base. It is dated 1676.

* A small piece of mosaic pavement was found under the nave in 1961 (R. Peers).

WIMBORNE. For centuries it has been like a magnet to the traveller in the meadows where the road crosses the River Stour by an ancient  bridge. It has the narrow winding streets of the old medieval town, but they bring us to its great glory set in a pleasant green space just off the Square. Wimborne has little but its Minster, but what more does it need than this noble piece of our ancient land, a splendour to look at, an inspiration to walk in, a veritable monument of English history?

Alfred was here as a boy, and we must think of him as standing on this very spot with a prayer in his heart that he might be a true King of England, for here he stood by his brother’s grave, with the shadows gathering about his country, and he, a boy of twenty, King.

How far down the mists of time this minster takes us we do not know, but the thread that runs through the life of our island here reaches back to the days of Rome, for a Roman pavement lies under the minster floor. Here there was a Saxon nunnery 1200 years ago, founded by St Cuthberga with her sister Quinberga. They had a little nephew growing up whose name was Aldhelm, and whose fame was to spread wide as the founder of abbeys that still remain with us at Sherborne and Malmesbury. They were the sisters of King Ina, who ruled the West Saxons for more than a generation, and their sacred place was of such repute that when Ethelred fell in battle it was here that they laid him. The fame of Cuthberga’s convent spread far and wide, and Wimborne became the Girton of its day, a training college sending out women who played their part in evangelising Europe. Cuthberga was abbess here for 20 years, and we must believe that here she lies in an unknown grave. No other church in England bears her name.

Edward the Confessor gave new life to the old minster, and when the Conqueror came his builders transformed this shrine of a Saxon king. Centuries passed by, and Margaret Beaufort, the mother of our Tudor dynasty, founded a chantry and endowed a priest to teach grammar  to all comers, and in another 100 years Queen Elizabeth founded the Grammar School as part of these great buildings that had developed as we see them during three centuries, from the Normans about 1120 to our master builders of the 15th century. After Elizabeth the tragic shadow of the Civil War passed over Wimborne, and in the exciting days of Charles the Second the miserable Duke of Monmouth was captured in a ditch not far away. Then Wimborne went to sleep again, and little has happened except that the town itself has lost some of its beauty while the old minster lives on as if it were all the world, unspoiled by time and still with the power to lift our thoughts far from these troubled days.

The minster is a noble spectacle, with its two great towers of almost equal size and height, the 15th century bell tower rising 95 feet from the street and the central Norman tower which has lost its spire and rises 84 feet. The central tower is the oldest visible part of the minster, rising to four stages of massive Norman piers and plain arches, the east and west wider than the north and south to give a fuller view of the altar. The three lower stages are open from the inside, and we have a thrilling impression of strength and beauty as we stand looking up at the great stones and the cunning workmanship of 800 years. A gallery built in the thickness of the walls runs round the second stage, and grotesque heads peer from between its arches. An almost hidden staircase in one corner leads to the clerestory, which lights the lantern and also has a passage in its walls. Inside and out the tower is decorated with fine arcading, having an interesting and varied series of piers and capitals. A corbel table 700 years old is the limit of the early work; one corbel shows a man devouring a bone.

There is more Norman work in a tiny stair turret of the north transept walls, in an altar recess in the same transept, and in the bays of the nave and chancel near the tower. We see in the nave how century by century the builders left the best of the early work, adding to it bit by bit in beautiful harmony, inspired by the spirit of their time.

Westward beyond the fourth pillar of the nave arcade the Norman ends; this was the western wall of the Norman church. Now the work is 14th century, when aisles were added with graceful east windows. From the 14th century also comes the north porch, with its vaulted roof and bosses; it has stone seats and a small priest’s room over it. Above the row of small Norman windows in the nave the 15th century clerestory was added when the western tower was built. In this tower is the ringing-loft above the vaulted roof, and outside one of its windows stands the famous wooden Quarter Jack, who with queer contortions strikes the quarters with a hammer. He has delighted Wimborne children since Charles Stuart was king, but he has changed much with the flight of the time he tells. Once sedately clothed as a parson, he now wears the dress of a British Grenadier of the days of Napoleon. There are few more popular figures in Wimborne than this bit of painted wood.

Older than Quarter Jack is the Orrery in a wall of the tower, still working after 600 years and more, for it was made in 1325 by Peter Lightfoot, the Glastonbury monk who made two or three other astronomical clocks we have seen in the West Country. A quaint thing to look at, this old clock is notable as a landmark of knowledge, for it was going 200 years before we knew that the sun does not revolve round a fixed earth, and we see on a blue background representing the sky the sun, moon, and stars all revolving round our planet, the sun completing its circuit in 24 hours and the moon in a lunar month revolving on its axis, shining gilt at full moon, changing gradually to dark. The clock is crowned with the figures of two winged and trumpeting angels.

Wimborne folk, with Jack and their Orrery, are rightly proud of their fine peal of bells; the tenor, weighing a ton and a half, has been ringing out since Richard the Second was pleading for a little grave to lie in, a little, little grave, an obscure grave. For five or six centuries this bell has called Wimborne to prayer.

We come inside the massive minster and are not disappointed. Something in this stately interior draws all eyes; it is the east end, rising impressively by 14 steps from the floor of the central tower. The ascent is made in two stages, halfway to the choir and on to the sanctuary, so giving the eastern interior a grand appearance. The whole minster is divided as a cathedral, with nave, chancel, choir, aisles, transepts, and three porches, and the length from east to west is 60 yards. In the 13th century the Norman chancel was extended by 30 feet and the builders gave their new wall a set of three lancets rarely surpassed in beauty of stonework, the central lancet enriched with the old glass in the church. The sedilia and the piscina have richly decorated canopies, and there are 16 canopied stalls, all carved.

Among all the splendour of the tombs in this fine place it may be that a brass in the pavement will move the traveller most of all. It covered the grave of King Ethelred and has a medieval portrait of the king engraved on it, with an inscription in Latin which says:

In this place rests the body of St Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, Martyr, who in the year of Our Lord 873 on the 23rd day of April fell by the hand of the pagan Danes.

Though the brass does not go back to Ethelred’s day, it is believed that it long rested over his grave. This stirring memorial has now been set in the chancel floor at the point where the high altar of the old church stood. It is recorded that the skeleton of a tall man was found here some years ago, but it cannot be said whether the remains were those of Ethelred. In any case it is a historic stone, and there is a mistake on it which should be corrected, for the date 873 should be 871.

Somewhere in this sacred spot of earth about us Ethelred lies. He fought nine battles hereabouts in the first year of his reign against the raiding Danes. It was in these battles that his young brother Alfred found his mettle, and it was the fall of Ethelred that made Alfred king. His first act as king was to stand by his brother’s grave where we stand now. He was 20, and his heroic spirit was stirred by the attacks of the Danes. He set up a palace two miles away, at Kingston Lacy, and enjoyed some years of peace, dreaming of a British fleet and building it, and at last he beat the Danes at Wareham and signed a treaty of peace with them. They came back in spite of treaties and desolated Wimborne, burning down the minster, and the young king, humiliated and betrayed, hid in the marshes of Athelney in Somerset, where every schoolboy knows that a housewife rebuked him for burning her cakes. Alfred was thinking of ships, and his fleet grew to 100 vessels, and in the end he kept down piracy, gave England peace, and made himself beloved throughout the land.

The noblest tomb in the minster is that on which lie John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and Margaret Beauchamp, his wife. They are on the north of the choir, graceful figures in alabaster. They were the father and mother of that Margaret Beaufort who was the mother of the Tudor Dynasty, and lies with her son in the noblest chapel in London which he built for himself, facing Parliament. The duke lies fully armed, with his gauntlet in his left hand, and his bare right hand lovingly holds his wife’s. She has rings on her fingers and her bodice is fastened by a jewel, her veil being held in by a simple coronet and falling about her shoulders. A queer creature at her feet keeps company with a lion at his feet. The exquisite flowing lines of her robe fall over her feet, and above them hangs a rare helmet 500 years old; we were told that it weighs over 14 pounds.

Across the choir from this fine tomb is a tomb with no figure, but with a broken inscription which tells us that it is in memory of Gertrude, the unhappy wife of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Devon. She sleeps alone, for her husband, lord of his proud Devon house, whose grandfather had helped to set Margaret Beaufort’s son on the throne at Bosworth Field, and who bravely stood with Henry the Eighth on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, displeased that proud king, fell from his high estate as the most powerful man in the west of England, and was beheaded.

The minster’s most magnificent tomb is the Elizabethan monument of Sir Edmund Uvedale, setup by his widow as “a doleful duty” three years after the death of the queen. It is the work of an Italian master hand, with a background of alabaster richly decorated in coloured scrolls, fruits, and other devices, and rising nearly to the roof of the aisle. On the tomb the knight reclines, and is slightly rising as if waking from sleep. It is indeed a sermon in stone. The life-like expression of the stern yet tender face is one of expectancy and earnest hope, every line speaking of a man who walked with God.

Near this tomb in all its splendour is the broken figure of a crusader, a poor battered stone thing believed to be part of the statue of Sir Piers Fitzherbert. Somewhere under the floor here lie two sisters of whom we should like to know more but of whom we know nothing except that one married an Excise Officer in Wimborne, that one died in 1759 and the other a year later, and that they were the daughters of Daniel Defoe. There is a 17th century wall monument of white marble on which Thomas Hanham and his wife are kneeling at a desk, dressed as in Stuart days, and from the end of Stuart days comes the tomb that all the curious look for here, that of the Man in the Wall. Here lies Anthony Ettrick, Recorder of Poole, a very eccentric fellow who annoyed the people of Wimborne and resolved to annoy them further by setting them a riddle when he died. He declared he would lie neither in nor out of the minster, and had his own coffin made, an oak one in a black slate case engraved with the date 1691. Fate was kinder to him, and he lived 12 years longer than that, and the date on the slate has been altered to 1703 in brilliant painted figures which remain to this day. His queer tomb gleams with painted shields and his coffin is put in a niche in the wall, so that legend has it that his vow was kept by putting him neither underground nor overground, neither in nor out.

Ettrick is interesting for something else, for he was the magistrate to whom they brought the Duke of Monmouth when they captured him half starved in the ditch, and he it was who put the son of Charles the Second into a prison cell. Two tributes on the minster walls are of unusual interest, one to a sexton who looked after the minster for 52 years (George Yeatman), the other to a son of the Bankes family who went out from Corfe Castle as a Cornet in the 7th Hussars and won the Victoria Cross in the Indian Mutiny, falling without knowing of the honour he had brought to his house. He was William George Hawtrey Bankes.

The windows of the minster are all modern except for the east window’s 15th century Tree of Jesse. The figure of Jesse himself is missing in it, and the lowest figure is David, who is playing the harp. The primitive design stands out clearly in the blue sky, and the Madonna  crowning the picture holds the Child surrounded by a golden halo. The glass was brought to Wimborne from a Belgian convent. Two fine windows have settings of the two great Songs of Praise, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis; in them Elizabeth is greeting the Madonna and the aged Simeon is receiving the Child in the Temple. A window of four lights near this in the north transept has great beauty and much historical interest; it is crowned by Christ in Glory, and in the main lights are four historic figures of Wessex, with small panels of scenes from their lives. Dunstan holding a harp is rebuking King Edgar for his treatment of Editha, and the small panel shows him as archbishop. Edward the martyr is giving alms and is also shown receiving his mortal wound as he takes the cup from his treacherous stepmother. Richard of Chichester is working on his brother’s farm as a youth and consecrated as a bishop, and the fourth figure is of St Sidwell, a British lady of high rank in the 8th century; we see her life as a recluse, and afterwards her martyrdom.

What is thought by many to be the best modern window here is one by the Powell workshops in memory of a beloved doctor. It has pictures of the healing and restoration of the sick, with musical angels all round. In the centre is Our Lord surrounded by the suffering, the lame, and the blind, and below are Luke the physician, Christopher carrying a child, and Isaiah, St John, and the prophet Ezekiel symbolise the teaching of the New and Old Testaments, above all being Christ on a throne, from under which flow the waters of healing. In the great west window are the Twelve Apostles.

The fine 19th century pulpit has a central recess filled with lovely detail showing Our Lord delivering the Sermon on the Mount, the Disciples grouped about him and Evangelists in small niches; the book-rest is borne by the Archangel Gabriel. The lectern is valuable for being one of only about 50 brass eagle lecterns surviving from olden days, and interesting because the eagle has eyes of mother-of-pearl.

One of the quaintest corbels we have come upon in any church finishes the arch near the Beaufort tomb. It shows Moses holding the Tables of the Law. We must think that the artist had a keen interest in hairdressing and allowed his fancy to stray on fantastic lines, for the patriarch’s long beard reaches to his waist and is tightly plaited, as schoolgirls used to wear their locks before they were all cut off. A long walrus-like moustache is caught into the plait halfway down, and the hair is smoothly parted in the middle and arranged in two horn-like structures above the forehead.

The crypt below and the library above are both much visited places. The crypt, fitted up as a chapel, has a vaulted roof resting on pillars and is divided into three aisles. The library is up a winding stairway from the vestry; we climbed it to find one of the rarest intellectual corners in England. It has one of the biggest chained libraries in the country, and we may call it the pioneer of free libraries, for 300 years before municipal libraries were dreamed of a worthy minister of Wimborne, William Stone, gave his own library to this place for the free use of Wimborne for ever. Every book was secured by a chain and padlock, and the old chains remain, though the rods are new. There are more than 200 volumes, the oldest of all a vellum manuscript in Latin with illuminated initials written about 600 years ago, in 1343.

A strange story is told of this remarkable little room. In it is a fine copy of the first edition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World. At some time a hole was burnt through 104 pages of the book, and every one of these pages has been neatly repaired by a piece of paper stuck over the hole with the text reproduced on each side. The story is told that the poet Matthew Prior fell asleep over the book as he was  reading it and that his candle burnt through its pages. We are asked to believe that he was so full of remorse that he repaired the pages himself, but the truth of the tradition is as doubtful as the brass tablet in the west tower which claims Prior as a native of Wimborne; he was actually born in Westminster. Yet the memory of the repairer of this book will live as long as the book exists, thanks to the perfect patchwork of the pages. It has been rebound and completed, duplicate pages from another copy of the same edition having replaced some which were missing.

This rare little room is kept as a small museum. Among the ancient Bibles here is the edition of 1595 known as the Breeches Bible because of the verse in Genesis which reads that “they sewed figge-tree leaves together and made themselves breeches.” On one shelf is a fascinating collection of early church music worth £1000, some of it having been photographed for the British Museum. Much of it is in manuscript, and as we tenderly turn the yellow pages, where queer diamond-headed notes move in stately measure, imagination seems to hear an echo of Gregorian chants rising from the choir below. On a fragment of a Saxon cross here is a crude carving of Our Lord. There is a tiny pewter vessel used for anointing with holy oil; an almsbox for silver only, with so small a slit that no copper coin could pass through it; and two chests full of deeds and charters relating to the minster, some from the 13th century. The oldest churchwarden accounts in England are hidden away here; one on parchment is dated 1399.

The minster has several ancient chests, but the oldest of all, the oldest thing in the building, is a chest hewn from a solid trunk of oak, massive and primitive beyond description. Though six and a half feet long, the inner cavity is only 22 inches long, 9 wide, and 6 deep. It is almost certain that this was the strong box of the Saxon nunnery, in which relics and other treasures were preserved 1100 years ago. Sometime in the Middle Ages six great locks were added, parts of which remain. In the 18th century a number of documents in the chest were examined and some were found dating back to 1200. Another old chest contains title deeds of charity lands for which six trustees are responsible. It has six locks and six keys, and can only be opened when all six holders of the keys are present.

The peace memorial to the men of Wimborne who did not come back is a graceful cross in the churchyard by the north door. By the south door is a huge sundial with three faces. Two inscriptions near one of these doors remind us that Dickens took two of his names for Pickwick Papers from stones hereabout, Wardle and Snodgrass.

The great minster has a little friend which has kept it company through all the ages, the chapel of the almshouses at the foot of St Margaret’s Hill. They are a group of charming cottages endowed by William Stone, who gave the library to the minster. A charming picture in their gardens, the cottages are gathered about the tiny chapel, which was part of a leper’s hospital in the 13th century, and is now primitive in the extreme, with bare walls, a little window, a holy water stoup, fading wall paintings, and one or two seats, a miniature House of God. Simplicity itself is it, in contrast with the spacious and stately minster, yet these two neighbours, rich and poor, have been consecrated through the centuries by the faithful ministry of holy men and the devoted worship of Christian souls.

Here also throughout the centuries the minster has had the grammar school as its companion, and indeed the governors of the school are the governors of the church, for in them was vested long ago “all spiritual jurisdiction” until then possessed by the college. Founded by Margaret Beaufort, the school was dissolved by the boy king Edward, and set up again by Queen Elizabeth. It has scholarships for singing in the choir, and has a reputation given it by Thomas Hardy for “drawing up brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan.” The school is housed in a dainty 19th century copy of a Tudor building, and has a great window in the central gable, set between two octagonal turrets crowned with pavilion domes.

With so much that is old and so much that is new, Wimborne reminds the traveller of what we often see in old towns, for behind the modern front so often unattractive is many a lovely peep of paradise, with a little river flowing slowly by.

Flickr.

Milton Abbas, Dorset - St Catherine's chapel

One of my fondest, and enduring memories, of my time at Milton Abbey was of the rather magnificent grass steps climbing up to St Catherine's chapel, LNK, from the cricket pitch east of the Abbey. Back in the day [late 70's, early 80's] they were a perfectly manicured, out of bounds, grass sweep up the hill through the wood. Now sadly only the bottom third appears to be grassed - I assume the bit that is maintained by the school - whilst the top two thirds has died and the trees and weeds have encroached. I assume this part is 'maintained' by the local council and austerity cutbacks have resulted in this lack of care, which is a shame.

The chapel itself has Saxon roots and Norman remnants and, as far as I remember, is internally extremely plain. Nonetheless it's charming, not least for its hidden location in the beech woods.

ST CATHERINE'S CHAPEL, on the hill, 300 yds E of the church and exactly in line with it. Built of flint and consisting of nave and chancel. The building is Norman - cf. the two Norman windows and two Norman doorways with tympana characterized by the segmental curve of the underside. The SW doorway is more elaborate. It has one order of colonnettes with fancy leaf capitals and an inscription promising a 120-day indulgence to pilgrims. Norman also - Latest Norman - the chancel arch with triple responds, the middle one keeled, water holding bases (already), scallop capitals, and a pointed unmoulded arch with a continuous outer roll moulding. - TILES in the chancel.

The story begins at the top of one of the most remarkable green stairways we have seen: 111 green steps of turf between solid balustrades of yew hedges. Rarely have men and Nature worked together more impressively. At the top of this long flight of steps is a chapel built by Saxons, renewed by Normans, long a pigeon house and a labourer’s cottage, but now a church again. It was on the site of this chapel that Athelstan, First King of All England, camped with his guards on their way North to meet the Danes, and here he dreamed that he would be victorious. The English Chronicle tells us that the dream came true, and Athelstan founded Milton Abbey in memory of his victory.

Flickr.

Milton Abbas, Dorset - Milton Abbey

Having been at school here I was surprised to find Milton Abbey, open, given a four star rating by Jenkins, my memories of the abbey admittedly date back some thirty years but they wouldn't award it four stars. Intrigued I added it to the list and was pleased to find that, whilst I wouldn't rate it quite as high as four stars, it is certainly deserving of a listing, if only for its location.  I'd forgotten the Hambro, Damer and Tregonwell monuments - all good of their sort - and the brass to John Tregonwell of 1565, but most of all the bizarre Jerichau font. Also worthy of mention is the reredos consisting of 26 empty plinths, the medieval tabernacle and the C16 statue of St James. Jenkins, as does Mee, attributes two paintings of Athelstan and his mother, Egwynna, in the stalls to the C15th but I'm sure this can't be true - if it is they've been so restored as to render them modern.

MILTON ABBEY was founded about 935 by King Athelstan. It was a large house built for forty monks, though with only twelve at the time of the Dissolution. A larger church was built in Norman times, but of this, apart from loose fragments (see below), only ashlar blocks remain, re-used in the present

building. The Norman church was destroyed by fire (‘totaliter inflammavit’ with even ‘columnis decrustatis’) in 1309, and rebuilding must have begun soon. We have no dates for progress, but the style can guide us to a certain extent. Choir, crossing, and transepts were gradually built, but the nave

was left undone. The cloister leant against the N transept. This and the great hall of Abbot Middleton (1481-1525) are all that is left of the monastic parts. The hall is now part of the house.

After the Dissolution Sir John Tregonwell obtained the estate and the buildings, but the church was allowed to become parochial. The ultimate heiress of the Tregonwells married Sir Jacob Bancks, who sold Milton in 1752 to Joseph Damer, a local man who married a daughter of the Duke of Dorset. Damer was created Lord Milton in 1753, and forty years later Earl of Dorchester. Architecturally his is the ownership that matters. From 1852 to 1933 Milton belonged to the Hambros; in 1954 the house became a boys’ public school.

The CHURCH lies S of the house and consists of choir, crossing, and transepts only. It is like a huge Oxford college chapel. The total length is 136 ft. The architecture outside as well as inside is singularly limpid. One might call it classic (not classical). What there is of differences of style does not detract from the clarity.

The earliest parts of the rebuilding do not survive, the retrochoir or ambulatory, the Lady Chapel, and the chapels N and S of the Lady Chapel. Excavations have proved these to have been straight-ended, with the Lady Chapel longer than the others.

The first thing one sees is the E wall of the church with five blocked arches and simple wall-shafts and springers of the rib-vault. The choir with its aisles follows, of seven bays, very uniform in style and hardly possible later than say 1325. All the windows of the aisles as well as most of the clerestory are of three stepped lancet lights, cusped, under one arch with the spandrels pierced.* The aisle parapet has openwork quatrefoils. The E window of the clerestory, above ambulatory and chapels, is of seven stepped lancet lights. Buttresses carry two sets of pinnacles and carry down the thrust from elegant flying buttresses. Inside, the vaults of aisles and choir are quadripartite and have bosses. The piers have strong attached shafts and round moulded capitals, the arches the typically Dec sunk wave mouldings. There are from the W two bays, then a piece of wall, then one more bay, another piece of wall, and another bay. The crossings and transepts continue the same system, although the crossing piers have to each side four, not three shafts. What does now change, however, and radically, is the window tracery. It is flowing, i.e. Late Dec, in the S transept and Perp in the N transept. The great S window is of seven lights and thoroughly reticulated in the tracery. The side windows are partly as in the choir, partly simply flowing (of two lights). The N transept must be Middleton’s. He also was responsible for the lierne-vaults of both transepts,* the parapet of the S transept passage at the level of the clerestory windows with diagonally set pointed quatrefoils, and the crossing tower and its fan-vault. The tower has to each side two long two-light bell-openings and three pinnacles. The N transept is shorter than the S transept and has one eight-light N window, and to N and S one very long three-light window with two transoms.

Against the N wall are the remains of five bays of a passage, with springers for fan-vaults. So this probably represents one of the ranges of the cloister. But which? We can’t say, as nothing is known of the cloister. Normally of course it stretched along the nave. But no nave was ever built. Yet a beginning was made, i.e. the arches from the transepts into the aisles, the E jambs of the first aisle windows, and the first N clerestory window, Perp in detail, were built. The springers of the vault are also at once noticeable. The W porch is by Sir George Gilbert Scott, who restored the church in 1865. James Wyatt had restored it before, in 1789.

FURNISHINGS. The church is exceptionally rich in furnishings. First the fitments of the choir. - REREDOS. A large image wall with three tiers of niches with canopies and a small Latin inscription across referring to Abbot Middleton and a Vicar of Milton Abbas who died in 1510. No-one could call this an imaginative design; there is nothing flamboyant to enjoy. - SEDILIA. Open to the aisle. Typically Dec, with cusped and sub-cusped arches and crockets and finials. - PULPITUM. A solid early C14 structure with a rib-vaulted passage in the middle, decorated by a big leaf boss. Staircases lead up to the loft. The responds of the passage are triple Purbeck shafts. - STALLS. Some parts original, including twelve MISERICORDS of no special interest.

Now the other items in the usual order of The Buildings of England. FONT. By the famous J. A. Jerichau (who died in 1883). Two life-size white angels, one with a cross, the other with a palm-branch. A rock between them and below an insignificant basin. - ALTAR. In the S aisle. By Wyatt. Alabaster with diagonally set pointed quatrefoils and a short frieze of carved drapery above - an oddly naive idea for Wyatt’s age. - PULPIT. Stone, on legs, with panelled sides. - SCREEN. Remains of a closely panelled screen wall in the S transept. - TABERNACLE (chancel). Once suspended over the Pyx, the only English parallel to the German Sakraments-haus, although of wood and not of stone. Square and then hexagonal with a spire. - ARCHITECTURAL FRAGMENTS. A number of Norman and later ones on a rack in the S transept. - There also is the fragment of an Anglo-Saxon CROSS SHAFT with interlace. - SCULPTURE. Upper half of a St James, c.1500 (S choir aisle). From the reredos of the medieval church in the medieval village? - Triptyc h of ivory; probably Spanish. - PAINTINGS. Two incredibly bad panels from a late C15 screen: King Athelstan and Queen Egwyma. - TILES. Some are collected in the S transept. - STAINED GLASS. In the chancel E window some C15 and later fragments. - The gorgeous S transept S window by Hardman, designed by Pugin in 1847. - PLATE. Cross, foreign, C17. - MONUMENTS. Broken incised slab to an Abbot, C13 or early C14, with Lombardic inscription (N transept). - Purbeck marble monument appropriated by Sir John Tregonwell d. 1565. It is the standard type: tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils, twisted shafts carrying a canopy. Instead of an arch two quadrants and a straight top. Panelled underside. Quatrefoil frieze and cresting. Tregonwell’s is a kneeling brass figure (N aisle). - Mary Bancks d. 1704 and others to 1725. Standing monument with awkwardly reclining effigy. She holds a book and a skull. Reredos with inscription on drapery and three putto-heads in clouds over. Detached Corinthian columns and a partly segmental top. - Lady Milton d. 1775, wife of the builder of the house. Designed by Robert Adam and carved by Agosrino

* But the second and fourth of the clerestory from the E are of two lights.

* One N transept boss refers to a bishop of Winchester who died in 1501.

MILTON ABBAS. We come to it for its lovely street, but more than all for its old abbey, one of the jewels of Dorset. There can hardly have been a day since Alfred’s grandson founded the abbey when it has not been beautiful.

The village was perhaps the most surprising street in England when every cottage had its chestnut tree trimmed and its grass neatly kept; the church, now back in the hands of the Benedictine monks, stands like a monument of the centuries in as rare a piece of country as even an Englishman need wish to see.

The story begins at the top of one of the most remarkable green stairways we have seen: 111 green steps of turf between solid balustrades of yew hedges. Rarely have men and Nature worked together more impressively. At the top of this long flight of steps is a chapel built by Saxons, renewed by Normans, long a pigeon house and a labourer’s cottage, but now a church again. It was on the site of this chapel that Athelstan, First King of All England, camped with his guards on their way North to meet the Danes, and here he dreamed that he would be victorious. The English Chronicle tells us that the dream came true, and Athelstan founded Milton Abbey in memory of his victory.

The church stands by the 18th century house built by the first Earl of Dorchester, who pulled down the ancient town of Milton but left the stately abbey enthroned like a joy for ever on the green lawns, enshrined in a landscape that could hardly be surpassed for beauty. About it are mile after mile of drives through wooded hills, and we may doubt if there are finer shrubberies, greener lawns, and neater cottages anywhere.

Founded in 933, destroyed in a thunderstorm in 1309, and rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries, the abbey church remains a noble place, a miniature cathedral in a vast green bowl. Some of its detail (such as the vaulting of the tower) is exquisite.

By the altar are two small doorways, thought to be the oldest things left. Three stone seats under a canopy were built about 1400. Before the altar sleeps Abbot Walter, who knew this place 600 years ago. A fragment of a stone to an abbot of his day lies near a marble group by Augustus Pugin showing Lady Dorchester, “the wisest and most lovely, the best and most virtuous of women,” with her husband bending over her in grief, both wearing the dress that was fashionable in 1775. He was Joseph Damer, who pulled the village down and built the house.

On a canopied altar tomb is a brass showing a kneeling man in Tudor dress; he is Sir John Tregonwell, who helped our Bluebeard King to get rid of some of his wives and was given this place for £1000 as his reward.

It was another John Tregonwell of the next century to whom an astonishing experience came at the abbey. Master Tregonwell was still in charge of his nurse when it happened, for he was only five. The abbey church was in ruin, overgrown with grass, and one of the lofty towers could be climbed by a stone stairway. There little John climbed up with his nurse. It was a summer’s day and the boy, excited at so great a height, reached over the parapet for a wild rose growing there. He lost his hold and fell sixty feet to the ground. The terrified nurse flew down the steps to pick up the battered body, but found Master John picking daisies on the lawn. His stiff Nanking petticoats, such as children wore in the 17th century, had acted as a parachute and floated him safely down to earth so that he was no worse for his fall. He lived to become High Sheriff of Dorset and died at 82, being buried within the abbey walls in 1680. He gave a library of books to the abbey as a thankoffering for his escape from death, and they were chained in the vestry here until, it is said, a vicar took them home and his servants tore their pages out and used them for curlpapers.

On the ground near the tomb of little John’s ancestor is a small brass of John Arthur, a monk of the 15th century. He might have known the abbot of 1461, Walter Middleton, who founded the school at Milton, to which Father Time was one day to bring Nelson’s Hardy, sighing over his arithmetic. His name is symbolised in a niche in the wall showing a mill over a tun with a W pierced by a crozier.

There is a very beautiful tabernacle shaped like a tower, made by a craftsman in wood of 500 years ago. Near it, under a glass case, are a small chalice, part of an abbot’s staff, and the remains of a pair of sandals, all found in a coffin 600 years old.

In this part of the church are fragments of stone ornaments, including a sturdy little man wearing a palmer’s hat and the “scallop shell of quiet.” The scallop shell, being peculiar to the Mediterranean countries the pilgrim had to visit, was chosen as a badge to show that he had been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Two pictures on the wall of this great place, where everything is as light as day, come from the days when the Wars of the Roses were raging and Caxton was setting up his printing-press at Westminster. They are rich treasures, for one of them is a picture of King Athelstan and the other a portrait of his mother. Here she lies. A thousand years of history have swept past her grave.

The abbey has changed hands in our time and passed into the possession of a group of members of the Church of England believing in spiritual healing, but it is still open for visitors.

Quite apart from the village all this glory lies, and the reason is dramatic. Not quite 200 years ago Milton Abbas village, and everything that it contained, was bought by Joseph Damer, who pulled the whole place down, except the abbey and St Catherine’s Chapel, to build himself a house. The stones were broken up and carted away, the little God’s Acre was changed into a lawn, and in their place the great house of Joseph Damer rose.

We might almost forgive this vandal now, for he did a surprisingly beautiful thing. He built a new village outside his park which was like nothing else in England. Its broad street rises sharply with a slow curve to the left. It has cottages on each side all alike, with yellow walls and thickly thatched and high-pitched roofs. Each cottage had a patch of green and a chestnut tree dividing it from its neighbour.

The water-butts at the side of each cottage were alike, and so were the gardens sloping up steeply for 150 feet at the back, topped by the trees that make the skyline. The new Milton Abbas was, in fact, on the flat bottom of a deeply-cut descending gorge with sloping sides behind the houses for gardens, like the vineyards on an Italian hill, the whole crowned and shut in by trees.

It was all very beautiful in the days before the war, but, as the poet says, there is nothing so beautiful now as it used to be. In those days we saw a lovely cottage there, far from the rnadding crowd, to let for a shilling a week. It is all very beautiful now, but much of its neatness is gone, and the traveller who turns the corner to look up this street may not feel exactly as the traveller felt before the world was changed. Charming it is, but then it was a picture like a poem, a vision like no other in our countryside.

Flickr.

Sherborne Abbey, Dorset

I'm ashamed to say that I was so absorbed by the roofs and other features in the abbey, open [Jenkins ****], that I completely ignored/missed the quire - this may have been due to general church fatigue, a recent ban on quire photography in cathedrals or general stupidity...I blame the latter or maybe the former.

Apart from the fan vaulting - which is astonishing - there's an abundance of interior here from a  C11th priest monument to C15th glass via Christopher Webb in the Lady Chapel, John Hayward's windows, the Horsey, Digby and Leweston monuments. It's a truly rewarding building.

In 705 Sherborne was made the see of the Bishop of Wessex. The church remained a cathedral till 1075, when the see was moved to Old Sarum. The cathedral became monastic in 998 and did not cease to be monastic till 1539. In the late CI4 a church was built immediately adjacent to the abbey church, the latter’s W wall serving as its E wall. Abbeys did not like parochial duties, for which the W part of their church had to be kept publicly open. In 1540 the abbey church was sold to the town, and the parish church was then demolished. That the town kept up the whole of the abbey church instead of demolishing the E end or the W end is much to Sherborne’s credit. Selby, Cartmel, Carlisle, Tewkesbury, Christ Church Oxford (St Frideswide), Southwark did more or less the same. Bridlington, St Iolm Chester, Dunstable, Leominster, Malmesbury, Holy Cross Shrewsbury, Waltham Abbey, Worksop preserved only the nave; Bristol and St Bartholomew London, only the choir.

The present church has minor but important Anglo-Saxon features, Norman transepts and crossing, and an E.E. Lady Chapel, but is predominantly Perp. The Perp work was begun from the E c.1420-30, and by the time of a fire which occurred in 1437 the crossing had been reached. The vaulting of the E end took place c.1450. The nave was built during the last quarter of the C15.

The church is c.255 ft long. It is built of Ham Hill stone.1

The church was restored in the 1850s by R. C. Carpenter (who died in 1855) and William Slater, his partner (nave and transepts 1849-51, choir 1856-8). Later the partnership was Slater & R. H. Carpenter, and the latter restored the tower in 1884.

EXTERIOR

The examination must start at the W front, although this faces us with what looks like extreme confusion. However, the confusion is fruitful; for it tells not only of the church in whose shadow we stand, but also of its Anglo-Saxon predecessor and of the parish church of All Hallows.

THE SAXON CHURCH. The rough masonry of the w wall belongs to it, as is proved by a completely preserved doorway which must once have led into the N aisle. It is now accessible only from inside the church. It is cut through the wall without any splays, is high in proportion to its width, and is accompanied by the typical shafts l. and r. at a distance from the opening. The shafts once continued as an arch. In section they are semi circular. Excavations about 1875, and again in 1964-70, have shown that w of this Saxon wall was a westwork consisting of a tower and two side chambers or transeptal features extending further N and S than the N and S aisles. The NE corner of the extension was found in I968 and is of good and telling long and short work.2

The shaft N of the Saxon doorway belongs to the scanty remains of All Hallows.

ALL HALLOWS. It is not known when the parish church was built. The late C14 is the most likely date. What remains is the whole N wall to the height of the original window sills with the wall shafts dividing aisle bay from aisle bay, the E responds of the aisle arcades (they are of standard section), and, to the N and S of these, the responds of high arches leading into side chapels which extended N and S of the ambulatory. The springing of the S archway is still in situ. The blocked doorway into the S aisle of the church is Norman, probably of c.1120, but the interior N jamb is evidently Saxon - cf. the laying of the stones - and similar to the N aisle doorway. There is in addition a narrower C14 doorway inside the Norman one. It was inserted c.1436. The main W doorway from All Hallows into the abbey church has tracery spandrels and a quatrefoil frieze over. W window of nine lights, the two principal mullions reaching right up into the principal arch.3

THE EXTERIOR CONTINUED. The Norman church extended as far W as the Saxon church, as the S porch proves. This is Late Norman. Norman rebuilding had probably begun early in the C12 at the E end and reached the S porch only c.1170.4 The upper floor of the porch is Victorian. The monumental entrance arch has zigzag at r. angles to the wall surface and two orders of columns. The capitals are fanciful, with masks, beaded bands, and foliage. There is also small nailhead l. and r., and round the corners to the W and E are blank arches with continuous roll mouldings. Such blank arches are also inside the porch. An upper tier of them has again zigzag at r. angles. The room is rib-vaulted. The S doorway is very large. It has an inner order of continuous zigzag at r. angles, one tall order of columns, and a zigzag arch, at r. angles too. The columns of the doorway inside the building have trumpet-scallop capitals, another proof of Late Norman date.

The S view of the church is well exposed and entirely Perp. The aisle windows are of three lights and the aisle has a parapet with blank quatrefoils, the first of many. The clerestory windows have steep two-centred arches, five lights with the two main mullions again reaching up into the main arch. Some of the sub-arches have straight shanks. The shallow buttresses between look Norman but are not. The S transept is evidently Norman, though the big S buttresses are Perp and so is the window. But in the E wall are exposed traces of the upper Norman windows. In the angle between S aisle and S transept is St Katherine’s Chapel, Perp too. Three-light windows and a quatrefoiled parapet. The S transept S window is of eight lights, again with the main mullions up into the main arch and again with some sub-arches with straight shanks. The Chapel of St Sepulchre is similar to that of St Katherine. The crossing tower has pairs of two-light bell-openings with a transom and Somerset tracery. Twelve pinnacles on the top. Before Carpenter there were eight. The choir S aisle has windows with depressed arches and four lights and another quatrefoiled parapet. A small doorway has leaf spandrels. The clerestory has flying buttresses and windows of six lights. They have two-centred arches, and the main mullions once more reach into them. There are also the straight shanks and sub-arches. The E window is of nine lights, the main mullions as before. More quatrefoiled parapets. The choir S aisle ends in the Chapel of St Mary le Bow. This looks curiously domestic, the reason being that this, its northern continuation, i.e. the larger part of the Lady Chapel, and the vestry block (see presently) were the Headmaster’s House of Sherborne School. The date of the conversion, 1560, is recorded on the E side. To the S are four-light mullioned windows. A multitude of shields of arms between them. Above the upper window is the coat of arms of Edward VI between twisted colonnettes.

SE of the chapel are handsome wrought-iron GATES of 1723.

The E end of the Lady Chapel was built as a war memorial in I921 to the design of Caroe. As Caroe liked his treatment of Gothic to be unexpected, he took motifs from the 1560 alterations to the Bow Chapel.

The N side of the church is less easily seen. Buildings of the school interfere, including the former monastic buildings now also belonging to the school.

The N side of the choir is like the S side. The vestry corresponding to the Bow Chapel is domestic-looking too. Three floors with mullioned windows, of six lights to the E. Of the chapel of Bishop Roger the C13 date is evident from the E window of three stepped lancets under one arch. The N transept stood to the N, against the monastic E range of the cloister. The roof-line of the dormitory is at once visible. The W and E windows are large and Perp, of six lights under depressed arches. Two transoms. The nave clerestory windows are as on the S side. But the aisle treatment is different. The windows are Victorian, but it is known that one original window had reticulated tracery, the only Dec feature of the whole church.

INTERIOR

The exterior having been treated as a perambulation, it might be useful to discuss the interior chronologically and always from E to W.

Of the ANGLO-SAX0N church some conjectures will appear presently.

NORMAN. Of the Norman choir nothing can now be seen except the plinths of the clasping buttresses of the E end visible below the stone bench in the ambulatory and some outer N walling inside Bishop Roger’s Chapel. It has three niches with continuous roll mouldings like the S porch and upper intersecting blank arcading, the colonnettes with three small scallops. Next, the crossing piers must be examined, and they are likely to be Saxon. What appears typically Saxon is the projection of the NE pier of the crossing to the NE and the SE pier to the SE, an angle of ninety degrees pre-supposing a crossing a little wider than the aisles. That is exactly the type of crossing one finds in the early C11 crossing of Stow in Lincolnshire, and also at Milborne Port in Somerset and Norton in County Durham. Equally puzzling are the nearly semi circular projections of the crossing piers into the transepts. They also do not tally in their bases and tops with the Norman work and may well be Saxon (cf. chancel arch Deerhurst, Glos.). The E and W crossing piers were rebuilt c.1850-5 by R. C. Carpenter (David Lloyd).

Clearly Norman on the other hand are the crossing piers otherwise, with their twin demi-shafts. Capitals of big, i.e. early, scallops. The E arch is now Perp, the W arch has had its shafts removed (for stalls) in the lower parts. The arches are stepped and the transept arches are stilted. There is no evidence of Perp work being higher than C12 work; on the contrary, the S transept walls (less parapet) are the same height as originally built in the C12, as the marks of the C12 weathering of its roof on the S tower face prove. The nave arch is not stilted; the transept arches are stilted because they are narrower yet reach the same height as the nave arch. The Perp crossing vault cuts into Norman lantern arcading in the tower. Seven arches, the middle one higher and wider.

The N transept has Norman walling, one odd shaft and capital exposed in the E wall and the complete arch to the N nave aisle. This also has tiny scallop capitals, except for one which has the kind of decoration like the porch capitals, i.e. may be a later alteration, as may be the roll attached to an edge of the arch. The Wykeham Chapel is Norman too. It has a straight E end and on that side and the S large upper intersecting arches. A fragment of the Norman E window also remains.

The S transept walling can be seen exposed in St Katherine’s Chapel. The arch to the S aisle is like the N arch, but all capitals are scalloped. Of the Norman nave all that can be seen is a piece of string-course on the NW crossing pier and in the E responds of the Perp piers the curve of a semi circular(?) respond. Of the aisle walling nothing is to be noticed, and the W wall - to end the Norman description - is confusing from inside as well. As has already been said, the Norman S doorway has a C14 doorway set in.

EARLY ENGLISH. This is mainly the Lady Chapel. It was originally three bays long, and Caroe’s E end cut it off. The entry from the retrochoir is marked by responds with a group of detached Purbeck shafts carrying lively stiff-leaf capitals and a finely and intricately moulded arch.5 Such capitals and shafting also for the former N and S windows. Short shafts on cornucopia-like corbels and again with stiff-leaf capitals mark the division between first and second bay. Rib-vault with a small boss and the springing of the ribs of the second bay.

The other E.E. contribution is Bishop Roger’s Chapel. but there is nothing to be remarked on inside except a good PISCINA and the Purbeck shafting of the E window, lancet lights as well as super-arch.

DECORATED. Signally absent, as has already been said.

PERPENDICULAR. This makes Sherborne what it is. Caroe was right to use it for his E bay of the Lady Chapel, and his tripartite entryarches, narrow-wide-narrow with thin piers, are a charming conceit. Above the tripartite arch is an Elizabethan (?) eight-light window, perhaps of the time of the front of the Bow Chapel. The retrochoir is fan-vaulted with many bosses; so are the choir aisles. The wall shafts are thin, but have the standard section. Panelled transverse arches W and E of the second bays from the W. The Chapel of St Mary le Bow has in its E wall a fireplace. This belongs to the alterations of 1560). The chapel itself dates probably from the C14 (cf. the S jamb of a former E window).

The choir has broad piers of complicated, unconvincing section. To the choir ‘nave’ the projection is the standard one, to the arches it is a triple shaft. The impressive thing is a broad panelled order which rises all the way up to embrace the clerestory window. There is one tier of panelling below these as well, and panelling against the E wall. The vault is a fan-vault, the earliest major one in existence (c.1450, i.e. after a fire in 1437),6 and indeed still with ribs, thin and straight as match-sticks - as if it were a lierne-vault.

The same fan-vaulting is used in the crossing. Broad panelling to the choir. The N transept is fan-vaulted too, whereas the S transept has a beamed ceiling with bosses. The Wykeham Chapel E of the N transept has a veritable primer-book fan-vault. The Chapel of St Sepulchre is lierne-vaulted, that of St Katherine again fan-vaulted (with a square of liernes in the middle). The nave aisles have lierne-vaults, the nave a gorgeous fan-vault with many bosses. The nave piers are not placed at equal distances, and it has been suggested that the narrower distances towards the W end are those of the Norman (or Saxon?) piers. The Perp piers are broad and panelled all over. Shields at the apexes of the arches (including a bishop of Exeter who ruled in 1509-19). Angel busts and fleurons along the string-course below the clerestory. The angels hold shields (including that of Cardinal Morton, who died in 1500). The clerestory windows have one tier of blank panelling below.

FURNISHINGS

From E to W, and always N before S. 

LADY CHAPEL. REREDOS. A sheet of glass engraved by Laurence Whistler in 1967-8 with two cornucopias and other motifs. - CHANDELIER. The earliest example in England of the familiar brass type, inscribed 1657. It is probably Dutch import. Such chandeliers appear in innumerable Dutch C17 pictures. - STAINED GLASS. E 1957 by Christopher Webb.

RETROCHOIR. Some floor TILES.

CHAPEL OF ST MARY LE BOW. FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with a panelled stem. - Also some floor TILES. - SCREEN. Only the base is Perp. The upper part with the openwork inscription must be of c.1930. It was designed by Caroe. - STAINED GLASS. Old bits in the E and S windows.

CHOIR. REREDOS. By R. H. Carpenter, 1884, with large figures in relief by Forsyth. - STALLS. Victorian, but incorporating a series of MISERICORDS. They include (N) a man pulling his mouth open, the Last Judgement, (S) a chained monkey, a man whipping a boy, an archer, a woman beating a man. - STONE SCREENS. 1856, probably by Slater or R. H. Carpenter. - STAINED GLASS. Clerestory by Clayton & Bell, 1856-8. - PAINTING. The decoration on walls and vault is by Clayton & Bell, executed by Crace.7

NORTH CHOIR AISLE. MONUMENTS. Two of Purbeck marble to abbots. Of Clement only the head and the round arch above or behind his head is preserved. This is of c.1150, i.e. the earliest of the whole South West English series. The face is severely stylized, reminding one of Maya heads. - The other is easily C13. Shafts l. and r. of the effigy and a trefoiled arch.

SOUTH CHOIR AISLE. There is a third Purbeck MONUMENT here, yet a little later. The abbot’s head is below a pointed-trefoiled arch with a gable. There are no shafts. The arch stands on corbels, one a head, the other stiff-leaf. - Tester of a C17 PULPIT, used as a table-top.

BISHOP ROGER’S CHAPEL. Assembled here are a number of MONUMENTS, all tablets. Dominating the others is the enormous one to Carew Henry Mildmay d.1784. Drapery hanging from the top of an obelisk against which stands an urn. Medallion of his wife above the urn, his medallion against the plinth. Hutchins says it is by Thomas Carter. - John Eastmont d. 1723. Several urns, the top one in a scrolly open pediment. 

CHAPEL OF ST SEPULCHRE. SCULPTURE. Wooden statue of St James, late C15. Spanish.

CROSSING PULPIT. 1899, designed by B. Ingelow and carved by James Forsyth. Ingelow was R. H. Carpenter’s partner. - LECTERN. 1869 by R. H. Carpenter, made by Potter’s of London.

WYKEHAM CHAPEL. MONUMENT. Sir John Horsey d. 1546 and his son d. 1564. Sir John Horsey bought the abbey at the Dissolution. He lived at Clifton Maybank. White stone. Tomb-chest with shields. Two recumbent effigies. Square pillars with arabesque decoration. Against the back wall the coat of arms in a lozenge (cf. Clifton Maybank, the frontis-piece of c.1535 now at Montacute in Somerset). Top with supporters and a small pediment. 

SOUTH TRANSEPT. STAINED GLASS. Excellent S window with ninety-six figures. Designed by Pugin and made by Hardman; 1851-2. - MONUMENTS. John Digby, Earl of Bristol d. 1698. Signed by Nost. A vast machine, but not too large for its position. Reredos with up-curved top on two elegant Corinthian columns. Inside in front of blank arches Lord Digby, and a little lower down his two wives holding burning hearts. Two putti, decidedly too small, outside the columns. - A son and a daughter of Lord Digby, d. 1726 and 1729, have a smaller tablet without any effigies. However, the epitaph is by Pope.

NAVE. STAINED GLASS. The W window probably also by Pugin and Hardman (RCHM).

ST KATHERINE’S CHAPEL. STAINED GLASS. Many fragments are assembled here, including small whole bearded figures; C15. - MONUMENT. John Leweston d. 1584. White stone, the foot-end attached to the E wall. Tomb-chest with shields, recumbent effigies, six Corinthian columns, big top with putti. The underside of the canopy has the characteristically Elizabethan ornamental motifs of straight lines connecting circles and squares. Dr Girouard attributes the monument to Allen Maynard (cf. Longleat, Wilts.).

SOUTH AISLE. FONT. Octagonal, with on the bowl a veritable pattern book of blank Perp three-light and four-light windows. It is C19, not C15.

SOUTH PORCH. The wrought-iron GATE is of 1750 ‘to prevent indecencies’.

PLATE. Cup, 1636; Paten on foot, 1699; Flagon, 1708; Almsdishes, 1712 and 1786; Cup, 1824.

1. This piece of information and very much else I owe to Mr I. H. P. Gibb. He read the proofs for Sherborne Abbey and corrected much and improved much. For the Saxon work his help was especially precious.

2. Since this was written Mr Gibb has identified the N jamb of the blocked doorway at the W end of the S aisle.

3. The two lower rows of lights were added by R. C. Carpenter. In doing so he discovered remains of a Saxon window which originally looked out from an upper floor of the Saxon tower into the nave.

4. Mr Gibb draws my attention to the marked irregularities of the nave arcade (the N side piers stand 14 in. W of the corresponding ones on the S side and all the arches vary in width). He suggests that the Saxon arcade and clerestory survived until the C15 rebuilding, and adds: ‘Why the Perp builders retained the cores of the Saxon piers with their very irregular spacing and yet built a perfectly regular clerestory on top of them is a mystery’.

5. Mr Gibb tells me that only the S shaft of the entrance arch is real Purbeck. The other shafts are replacements in local Forest marble.

6. But Howard pointed out that the piers and clerestory windows of before 1437 told of an intended fan-vault.

7. Information from David Lloyd.

SHERBORNE. As he lay a captive in the Tower, waiting for his betrayal by the King of England, the founder of the British Empire asked his wife to bury him in Sherborne. Sir Walter Raleigh loved this place. So do we; so do all who come. It was the home of the dreamer and founder of the British Empire and it is the grave of two kings.

It has been a great place for a thousand years and more. Its beginnings were much farther back to Raleigh than Raleigh is to us. About 40 generations of men have passed this way since the Saxon bishop Aldhelm came from Malmesbury to build this church and set up this school. Some say Alfred himself found his love of learning here, and certainly his two brothers knew this place, for here they sleep, two kings before Alfred. So that we have at Sherborne the founder of this great school in Aldhelm, the foundations of our national greatness in Alfred, and the founder of our Empire in Sir Walter Raleigh. It is a high tradition.

Much there is that Raleigh himself would see here, in the streets, in the abbey, in the little hospital, and in the great house itself. Who can walk about in this place that he loved without thinking of the pity of it all? We think of that time when his doom was hastening on, when the knowledge that Raleigh was fitting out his ships set Spain thinking. Philip was not yet dead and he had not forgotten Elizabeth and the Great Armada. With such a king as James on Elizabeth’s throne the last of the Elizabethans could be hunted down. So the Spanish ambassador protested to the king against the activities of Sir Walter Raleigh and against his being free, and in the end this man who helped to scatter the Armada, the last of that incomparable group of Englishmen who spent their lives in fighting Spain, who made the English throne safe for this king to sit on and gave the English power at sea - the last of this company of immortals was handed over to Spain and betrayed by James himself. He set Raleigh free to organise an expedition and allowed him to organise it on the basis of war, and behind Raleigh’s back he gave the Spanish ambassador all the secret plans and this solemn promise to Philip: that if Raleigh offended the might of Spain he, King James himself, would send the founder of the British Empire back to be hanged in Madrid. Such things were done by our Stuart kings.
Raleigh was away a year, and when he came back to Plymouth, on a glorious summer’s day in 1618, his faithful wife was waiting for him. It must have been too much for her to bear, for Raleigh had failed. His dream had not come true, the Spaniards had attacked his unarmed men, and, bitterest news of all this woeful tale, their boy was dead.

So Raleigh met again this woman he had loved in the happy days at Sherborne, and in this desperate hour there stood beside them the kinsman who betrayed him, to arrest him in the name of the king. Spies were set to watch and trap him on the road to London, and on this journey up they passed through Sherborne. Raleigh’s heart was broken as he looked at it all, and there in this scene of his early married life, thinking of the tragedy of the faithful woman at his side, he burst out, All this was mine, and it was taken from me unjustly.

That is one of the moving memories which comes to us in this old Dorset town, this lovable and delightful place where we may walk back to medieval England when we will.

It lies in the middle of Blackmoor Vale. Surrounded by wooded hills, its pastures provide some of the richest grazing ground of the county, and it gathers about a Norman abbey, the beautiful old buildings of a famous school, a 15th century almshouse, and the ruins of a Norman castle.

In a park on one side of the little river Yeo stand the fine ruins of the castle built 900 years ago by the fighting Bishop Roger. He called it his palace, but it was as strongly fortified as any of the fortresses of the feudal barons. Queen Elizabeth gave the estate to Raleigh on hearing that he had seen and loved the fair town and the countryside on his rides from Plymouth to London, and after those days it was granted to the Digbys, who have it still. They defended it for the king in the Civil War and it was so shattered by the Parliamentary bombardment that it has remained a ruin. Cromwell is said to have undermined the north wall with the help of miners from the Mendips, and so forced its surrender.
But it was Raleigh himself who seems to have realised that there must be a new house. In the excavations that have been taking place in the ruins a flight of stone steps have been discovered which have suggested that Raleigh was making an effort to adapt the old house to his needs, but he must have given up the attempt. He wanted “the most fine house” and set to work to build it. Little could he have dreamed that in only a year or two his fine house would be taken from him and he would die a shameful death in the shadow of Parliament, betrayed by a king not worthy to unloose his shoe. A stone seat in the grounds is said to be where he sat smoking when his servant threw a flagon of ale over him, thinking he was on fire, but we do not know if the tale is true. The new house became the home of the Digbys, and after the Restoration of the Stuarts stones from the ruins were used to extend it and reconstruct it in the form of the letter H. Here William of Orange stayed after his landing, and his Proclamation to the English People was printed at a press set up in the drawing-room. A frequent visitor to the house was Alexander Pope, who came to stay with his friend “the good Lord Digby”; he is said to have written his Essay on Man in an arbour in the grounds. A Roman pavement discovered hereabouts is now the floor of the castle dairy.

Impressive and captivating as Sherborne is, its most thrilling possession is the ruin on a high knoll between two streams. It was the home of Raleigh in the days before he began the great house. The stone walls are broken, but there are magnificent fragments which thrill us with the thought that they are as Raleigh saw them - a round Norman pillar perfect with its capital and the walls of what appears to have been the chapel, with a lovely broken window on one side and a window complete with four rows of ornament on the other: it has shafts and an inner arch, and is the best part of the walls. There are three doorways, little chambers and corbels, fireplaces and Tudor windows, and great masses of masonry which are none too safe, all approached through a gatehouse with a high lantern tower and a Norman archway. This gateway, which is almost entirely Norman, was the only way into the castle, which was strongly defended by a moat 30 feet deep and by two lakes and marshy land on three sides, a narrow causeway leading to the gate. Just below is a farm, looking as it probably looked in Raleigh’s day; beyond is the abbey tower rising above the roofs; and all round the outer walls of the old castle is the glory of an English park, with nothing to break its silence but the song of birds. The ruins have been excavated in our time by Mr C. E. Bean, and a covered way from the castle down to the low ground has been found.

But there were great men here before Sir Walter Raleigh, and fine places before the castle, for Sherborne School was founded by Aldhelm as the 8th century was breaking. It is thought that Alfred was a scholar here, in a school then new. The Grammar School was spared when the monastery was destroyed by Henry the Eighth, and Edward the Sixth, the boy king who did so much for schools, endowed it. He is not forgotten, for his statue looks down on the boys as they flock into their ancient dining-room.

Many of the old monastic buildings now form part of the school. The Abbot’s Hall is their chapel, and the 15th century Abbott’s Lodging is converted into studies. The walls of the room where the monks received their visitors are covered with books. Perhaps the most charming bit of it all is the 17th century school-house, now the dining-room. Above its square hooded doors and mullioned windows extends a pillared balustrade of exquisite grace, and the Stuart arms over the doorway proclaim its loyalty. The wide courtyard, dominated with the tower of the abbey, dreams in the quiet noontide till the hour strikes from the abbey bells, when doors on all sides are flung open and hosts of boys flock out into the sunshine as Sherborne boys have done for about 1200 years.

We remember a picture over the door of the school chapel of Christ among the lilies, the gift of an Old Boy who painted it and sent it to the school “where he learned to love the holiness of beauty.”
We remember also the noble roll of honour with 59 Sherborne boys who won the DSO, and two who won the Victoria Cross. The VC’s were Charles Hudson and Edward Bamford. On the day Captain Hudson won his VC nearly all the officers of his battalion had been killed or wounded. The enemy had penetrated the line and almost reached our right flank. Hastily collecting some men, the captain charged the enemy, drove them back, and led a party of five up a trench where the Germans were 200 strong. Climbing over the parapet with only two men, he rushed the position although severely wounded, and went on directing the attack until a hundred prisoners and six machine guns were taken and the perilous situation was saved. Captain Bamford’s VC was won at Zeebrugge. It must have seemed that he was leading his marines to inescapable death when, after landing on the Mole, they stormed German batteries in the face of almost insuperable difficulties. Twice he crossed the Mole under heavy fire, establishing a strong position.

Today there are 450 boys sharing the atmosphere and the high tradition of this school, and it was good to find a sister School for Girls, founded by Mr and Mrs Kenelm Digby, with 300 girls on its rolls.

One other bit remaining of the monastery is the 14th century Conduit where the monks used to wash and shave. Finely preserved, it stands just off the lowest, widest, and busiest part of the street, its fine window tracery and the vaulted roof perfect of their kind. No finer architectural group is here than this graceful stone structure against its background of black and white timbered houses, with high roofs, tiny dormer windows, and rising behind, as if to crown a mass of ancient beauty, the slender pinnacles of the abbey tower. A wondrous sight it is, majestic at all times but like a dream on a Spring market day, when piles of oranges, lemons, and rosy apples stand out against the soft brown stone of the Conduit and the sheaves of mimosa, narcissus, anemones, and daffodils form a living and fragrant frame to an unforgettable picture.

Yet the heart of Sherborne is not here, but in its abbey, built in 706 by the wise St Aldhelm, its first bishop. A charming story tells us that King Ina of Wessex persuaded Aldhelm, then Abbot of Malmesbury and an old man, to undertake the hard task of organising the new diocese, where much rebellion and opposition were to be expected; and that the scholar began his new work by putting on the simple habit of a minstrel, winning all hearts by the sweetness of his song.

Aldhelm’s church was a cathedral, and such it remained for 370 years, during which time there were 27 Bishops of Sherborne. Not until 1075 was the seat of the bishopric removed to Old Sarum. In 998 was founded here the monastery of which the cathedral became the abbey church. We may see a built-up doorway and a fragment of wall which were part of St Aldhelm’s Saxon church, there when the Norman building was set up. Inside and out this place is wondrous to behold; it crowns with ancient grandeur the medieval town where we may all forget the stress and strain of life.
The Norman work includes the tower, with magnificent arches as far up as the bells, the finely restored south doorway which has a room above it, and part of the transepts. The two turrets of the Norman porch have each twenty little carved heads and four corner ones, great gargoyles, and parapets with roses in the quatrefoils.

The 13th century saw the building of the lady chapel and Bishop Roger’s Chapel, and in the 15th century this grand old place was decorated and transformed as if a Norman knight had put over his armour an embroidered tunic and a cloak studded with gems. The lower part of the pillars in the arcades was cased in graceful panelling, fine spacious windows took the place of the Norman triforium, and the clerestory and the great west window were opened out. The choir was practically rebuilt; the light and lofty stonework of its arches springs from floor to roof like a graceful tree, and breaks out in the wondrous fan-tracery of the roof, considered by some to be the most perfect example of fan-vaulting in England. It is a miracle of grace. Bishops and abbots of Sherborne look down from windows round the choir. Beneath them, and within the panels of every arch, are wall paintings which carry the eye in a riot of colour to the glories of the roof, where every boss and every panel of tracery glow in rich shades picked out in gold. Completing this brilliant mass of colour the naturally rich brown of the stone is in many places a deep red, attributed to a fire 500 years ago.
There are ten canopied choir stalls covered with carvings whose miserere seats depict quaint figures and scenes in the Middle Ages. Here a schoolmaster is soundly thrashing a boy lying across his knees; there a hen is gleefully hanging a fox; one hunter is drawing  his bow while another wrestles with a lion; a grotesque head is set in a framework of vine leaves, and from every elbow-rest peer out weird and fanciful faces. In front of these priceless seats, the work of the 15th century, the modern stalls, the Bishop’s Throne, and the sedilia are worthy of their glorious predecessors. Carved in 1858 from 15th century roof beams, they are beautiful with angels, fruits, and wreaths of flowers.
The fan-vaulting of the nave and transepts is as fine as that of the choir, but the mellow brown of the stone is only enhanced by corbels of angels bearing azure shields and wonderfully painted bosses. A true lover’s knot unites the initials of Henry the Seventh and his queen Elizabeth of York. We see the Tudor rose, the emblems of the Passion, shields, dragons, and other mythical creatures. A rebus illustrates the name of the great Abbot Ramsam who carried out the magnificent 15th century restoration, his device showing a Ram with the letters SAM. Altogether there are 800 of these painted and gilded bosses, some of those in the north transept weighing half a ton.

In this wonderful roof endless waves of lacelike design rise one behind the other like the filmy crests of the on-coming tide, and its insistent beauty attracts the gaze as inevitably as the fathomless blue of an Italian sky. When all this glorious work was finished in 1490 a great fair was held in Sherborne, and Pack Monday Fair has been held on the second Monday in October ever since.

The south transept has a panelled roof of black Irish oak with gilded bosses. This is the chapel of the Digbys, benefactors of the abbey now and for many generations. There is a somewhat overwhelming monument to Lord John Digby, who died in 1698; he is standing between two wives, who are holding a lamp and a burning heart. The wigs of the ladies are piled in tight curls about their heads, and the ornate stiffness of the carving is equalled only by the pompous inscription. A skull and cross bones are the most natural details of the whole erection, and plump cherubs, their faces distorted by grief, guard it on either side.

In an inscription written by the poet Pope to Robert and Mary Digby, both of whom died young, are the lines:

Yet take these tears, MortaIity’s relief,
And till we share your joys forgive our grief.
These little rites, a stone and verse, receive,
Tis all a father, all a friend, can give.

To many it will seem that the most precious corner of this great place is in the chapel dedicated to St Catherine, where Raleigh used to sit. It has a beautiful 16th century memorial to John Leweston and his wife. On the canopied tomb the knight and lady rest in stately dignity, he fully armed with his feet on his helmet. Above the face of the lady her hair is gathered in a tightly-fitting cap beneath a wide-folded headdress. Her brocaded dress closely follows the lines of her figure, and she wears a ruff. But the finest tomb is that of Sir John Horsey, lying by the side of the young son who followed him to the grave in 1564. Both are in armour and are carved by a master, their family crest, the head of a horse, crowning the four corners of their canopied tomb.

Here, with nothing that is spectacular to mark it, is a thrilling spot which must seem sacred to all Englishmen. It is marked by a brass tablet behind the altar, near which lie two stone coffins of kings. They come to us from Saxon England and in these coffins were laid two brothers of King Alfred. This is what the tablet says:

Near this spot were interred the mortal remains of Ethelbad and of Ethelbert his brother, each of whom succeeded to the throne of Ethelwulf their father, King of the West ‘Saxons, and were succeeded in the Kingdom by their youngest brother Alfred the Great.

These coffins have been known for not very many years; Ethelbad’s was found in 1858 and Ethelbert’s in 1925. Ethelbad reigned five years, dying in 860. He helped his father to win a decisive victory over Danish pirates at Ockley in 851, an event to which is attributed the peace of his reign and the popular esteem in which he was held, all England mourning for him. Ethelbert was bequeathed the Kingdom of Kent, but on the death of his brother Ethelbad he became King of Wessex, reigning until 866. During his reign the Danes sacked Winchester, but he drove them off. His reputation was that of a peaceful and noble king.

The first of these kings was found just after the time of John Parsons, who was vicar here more than 52 years. He has a tablet but needs no monument, for it was by his exertions that the restoration of this church was begun and to a great extent completed, in 1851.Here sleeps a hero of the Indian Mutiny, Andrew Cathcart Bogle, VC. He died at Sherborne House after three years of patient suffering, having won his VC for conspicuous gallantry in leading the way into a house strongly occupied by the enemy, from which a heavy fire harassed the advance of his regiment. The Dorset soldiers who fell in the Great War are remembered by two finely carved oak screens, and the restoration of the base of the 14th century stone screen is the memorial the Freemasons offered to their fallen brethren.

We do not know where Cardinal Wolsey used to sit when he worshipped here while he was tutor to the Marquis of Dorset’s sons, but his monument, a far from silent one, is the huge tenor bell, Great Tom, which he gave to the abbey in his spacious days of prosperity. He brought seven enormous bells to England from the Continent, and Great Tom was the smallest of the seven. It weighs two and a quarter tons and needs six men to ring it, and its inscription reads:

By Wolsey’s gift I measure time for all,
To mirth, to grief, to Church, I serve to call.

For many years Great Tom hung silent in his chamber, but the bell has now been recast, and just before we called had been brought home from the foundry welcomed by all the town, a hundred boys of the School drawing it triumphantly back to the abbey to rejoin its seven companions. The Fire Bell, rung only for great conflagrations, bears this delightful rhyming version of the saying that God helps those who help themselves:

Lord, quench this furious flame:
Arise, run, help put out the same.

Among its big brothers hangs the small sanctus bell which used to ring before the Reformation. Near the porch door stands an old clock made by William Monk in 1740; he was paid £25 for it.

In the south choir aisle, near a fine old table and the old canopy of a pulpit, lies on his tomb the figure of Abbot Lawrence of 1246, and by the still beautiful lines of the drapery on the tomb we can tell what must have been the dignity of his figure before folly defaced his features.

The old glass of the abbey is all in two windows of St Catherine’s Chapel (where Raleigh used to sit). Here some lovely fragments of 15th and 16th century work have been grouped, and stand out vividly on a clear background. The glass was taken from the choir in 1856 and stowed away in the Muniment Room, where it was almost forgotten until 1923, when it was set up again to the memory of the fine old craftsmen of the Middle Ages. There are the quaintest little figures in the medieval dress of saints and prophets, and many coats-of-arms. In the chapel which is now the Children’s Corner are some tiny medallions of greenish glass, yellowed by age, showing the Madonna and an angel’s head with outstretched wings. The south window of the Digby Chapel (designed by A. W. Pugin) illustrates the Te Deum, and in Abbot Ramsam’s great west window are Old Testament kings, prophets, and patriarchs. The rich effect of the whole interior is intensified by the colours of the Dorset regiment, which have been carried in engagements in various parts of the world from 1829.

A 13th century archway leads to the lady chapel, which has been brought back to life in our own time, having long been cut off from the abbey and used as part of the school. By the generosity of the Digbys it has been returned to the church. With its fine 13th century vaulting, archways, and capitals, it is a fitting continuation of the lovely choir. A new sanctuary has been added, and five beautiful screens. It is now a charming place, an east end worthy of this great shrine.

The abbey was given to Sir John Horsey after the Dissolution, and the people of Sherborne bought it from him for £230 and made it their parish church, destroying the church of All Hallows next door, which had been the cause of many quarrels between them and the monks because it was not licensed for baptisms. These quarrels led to the disastrous burning of the abbey. Another record of these unworthy disputes is a small doorway now bricked up at the west end; it was the only door by which the townsfolk could enter, and was narrowed by the monks as if to mark their own superiority.

Across the space in front of the abbey is a rare old building everybody loves to see, the Hospital of St John. The abbey stands guarded by two endowments of pious benefactors, the school and the hospital. Abbey, school, almshouse, and castle - all were the work of churchmen, those princes of the church who laid the foundation of England as warriors, lawyers, statesmen, and scholars. This charity, governed by 20 brethren known as Masters of St John’s House, provides a home for twelve poor men and four poor women. The charming group of brown stone houses has been made more comfortable since the 15th century, but its medieval grace and character have been preserved. In the cloister sit the old men in black suits with shining buttons and low felt hats, the snow white pigeons of the abbey fluttering and strutting about their feet. The sunny sitting-room of the old ladies was gay with flowers when we called, and in their comfortable chairs we found them chatting and smiling, wearing their white lace caps. The original oak door, hinged in the middle and still with its early iron bolts and fittings, leads into a dining-hall with Jacobean chairs, tables, and stools. On the high dresser is ranged some fine old pewter.

By a 15th century archway, with a screen of the same time hewn from solid oak, we come into the tiny chapel where the men sit below and the women look down from a gallery above. There are two precious things here. One is a 15th century triptych, with three panels illustrating the Miracles: the healing of the widow’s son, the raising of Lazarus, and the casting out of a devil from a dumb man. Strangely interesting is the early artist’s conception of the little scaly demon coming from the man’s mouth, wearing a mitre. Miniature pictures in the corners show two more miracles. There is little doubt that this was given as an altar-piece by the founder of St John’s, and we love to think that for more than 500 years the old folk have found new strength and comfort in this. The triptych was painted on oak by an unknown artist. Its colours are fresh and brilliant; the 15th century costumes, shoes, and headdresses are of extraordinary interest, and the lifelike painting of the many faces is startling. On the outer side of the doors are the figures of four Apostles.

The other rare possession in the chapel is the painted glass. The fragments of 15th century glass in the south window have been arranged to form three charming figures in glorious colour. The Madonna in the centre is considered to be one of the finest examples of medieval glass in the county. The two St Johns are on either side. The restoration (by Mr Horace Wilkinson) is an exquisite specimen of work, each new piece having been marked by a diamond, so that the old and new work can be compared in this lovely harmony.

One great treasure Sherborne has given to England’s famous manuscript collections, the Sherborne Missal, an order of Church service written some time between 1396 and 1407 by John Whas, and illustrated by his brother monk John Siferwis. It is one of the finest examples of English illumination, and it must have been towards the end of these eleven years that John the writer said:

John was the monk took pains this book to write,
Such early rising leaves him lean and white.

The narrow winding streets of this old town, with their fine houses and gateways, their oriel windows and irregular gables, charm us at every turn. It is little wonder that Sir Walter Raleigh, a broken prisoner in the Tower, who had seen the marvels of the old world and the new, dreamed with longing of his pleasant home by the little river Yeo, and prayed that he might lay his weary body within its quiet shadows.

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