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VII.—The Monastery of St. Milburge at Much Wenlock, Shropshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

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Extract

Most religious houses in England were founded for a particular Order, and remained in connexion there with till the Dissolution. Several early foundations, however, went through various changes and ended as Benedictine abbeys.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1922

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References

page 106 note 1 De Gestis Regum, lib. II, cap. 13, vol. i, pp. 267, 268, Rolls Series. Translation by Walcott, M. E. C. in Four Minsters round the Wrekin (1877), p. 76Google Scholar. This book is seriously inaccurate, but is valuable for its references to originalauthorities.

page 108 note 1 Lord Forester has kindly lent me a valuable MS. in his possession, the Register of Roland Bruge or Gosenell, prior of Wenlockearly in the sixteenth century. Under date 1521 it speaks of re-glazing and re-whitewashing a part of ‘navem ecclesie vulgariter vocatam Newe churche’. The nave was built some 300 years before this was written, and it is very remarkable that the term ‘Newe churche’ should have survived so long.

page 109 note 1 The date of this is uncertain, but the formsof the buttresses suggest that it was an addition of the fifteenth century.

page 110 note 1 Excellent drawings of this and many other features are to be found in James Potter's book on Wenlock Priory published about 1851.

page 110 note 2 There is another in the same county, in the south aisle of the parish church of Ludlow.

page 111 note 1 The tracery has sadly perished since the drawings were made for Potter's book in the middle of the nineteenth century.

page 111 note 2 The Rev. H. E. Salter has kindly looked up the reference at the Bodleian Library in the Dodsworth MSS., lxviii, 91. There is a gift to the priory of Clifford, and another to the church of Hagneby, where there was no religious house. It is evident, therefore, that the ‘church’ of Wenlock was the parish church.

page 112 note 1 See Vetus Disciplina Monastica, ed. Herrgott, , 1726Google Scholar, Pars I, cap. lv, p. 250.

page 112 note 2 Part of the space over the south nave aisle at Worcester is said to have been fitted up as a library in the fourteenth century.

page 112 note 3 At Durham, the library, built in the fifteenth century, is over the slype between the church and the chapter-house.

page 113 note 1 In Blomefield's, History of Norfolk, ii, 520Google Scholar, referring to Wymondham Abbey, there is a curious statement as to the ‘southisle, over which, till the Dissolution, the monks’ lodgings were joined to the south side of the church'. The authority for the statement is not given, and it is difficult to understand what is meant by the monks' ‘lodgings’.The nave aisle at Wymondham is much later than that of Wenlock.

Mr. A. W. Clapham calls my attention to an unusual upper chamber at Bella Pais, a house of Premonstratensian canons in Cyprus. It is described in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1882-1883, pp. 18Google Scholar, 26-28: see especially figs. 49, 50, 54. The church has transepts and nave aisles of two bays. Over the eastern bay of the north aisle is an upper chamber connected with a building at the west of the cloister, here on the north side. This building was probably the lodging of the head of the house. The chamber is differentiated from that at Wenlock by this fact, by a newel which approaches it directly from below, and by a small window looking on to the nave. The vaulting of the aisles is the same throughout, and not lower in this part as at Wenlock: there is a west window. I presume that the chamber was a private chapel for the head of the house, with a window to enable him to join in the worship below.

page 114 note 1 In Mr. Worthington's plan, measured in 1884, there is a western projection at the north-west corner, which has a return wall some 17 ft. west of it going northwards. This suggests a great narthex or galilee to the church, but there is no other indication of such a feature, and the wall must be part of some domestic building attached to the western range.

page 114 note 2 Roland Bruge's Register, referred to above, speaks of a receptorium, which may mean the cellarer's checker.

page 115 note 1 Les Æuvres de Guiot de Provins, ed. Orr, J., pp. 60, 61Google Scholar; Manchester University Publications, 1915. The translation is quoted from Fosbrooke's, British Monachism, ed. 1817, p. 107Google Scholar.

page 115 note 2 Rites of Durham, Surtees Society's edition of 1842, p. 70.Google Scholar

page 116 note 1 I had the advantage of examining the chamberin company with the late Mr. J. W. Clark, well known for his work The Care of Books. He was certainly of opinion that it was a library.

page 117 note 1 There is a fine set of drawings of these details in Potter's book above mentioned.

page 118 note 1 Rites of Durham, p. 75.

page 118 note 2 Under date 1524, the Register of Roland Bruge speaks of the common seal being affixed in domo sive camera cartarum. The muniment room was occasionally over the chapter-house.

page 120 note 1 It may well be the large hall referred to inRoland Bruge's Register under date 1521: magnamque aulam picturavit ac de novo certas ibidem fenestras vitriavit.

page 121 note 1 See plan in Potter's book.

page 122 note 1 See Turner, and Parker's, Domestic Architecture in England, iii, 366–71,Google Scholar where there are plans and a section.

page 122 note 2 Potter's plan of 1849 shows this doorway in the middle of the wall, but this must be a mistake, as there is no sign of its having been moved, and there is the beginning of an arch, or hood-moulding, over the southern jamb on the west side.

page 124 note 1 The upper fire-place is modern, and it is not certain that there was one originally.

page 124 note 2 Edited By J. W. Clark, 1897, p. 203.

page 124 note 3 Op. cit., p. 205. There is a similar passage in the Customs of Cluny, pars prima, cap. xxiii, Vetus Disciplina Monastica, ed. Herrgott, , 1726, p. 184:Google Scholarhabet namque armariolum in quo talia rccondit, et adhuc candelas, ceteraque necessaria, raroque aut nunquam defuerit in eo piper, cuminmn, gingibrum, aliaeque radices quae sunt salubres ut sit semper in promptu quod valeat infirmo fortassisut aliquando contigit subitanca passione percusso vel si expedit ut pigmentum ei conficiatur.

page 125 note 1 I confess that I thought at first that this newel was separate from that of the Master of the Farmery, but measurements show clearly that they are the same, the staircases being above and below each other. The arrangement is very rare in England. Mr. Hamilton Thompson tells me there is an example in the tower of Tamworth church.

page 125 note 2 There are many careful drawings in Potter's book.

page 125 note 3 Both Potter's and Parker's books show them as coming down to the floor. They are now two or three inches from it, and it is difficult to see how they can ever have rested upon it.

page 126 note 1 The four-centred doorway, two steps above the corridor, is moulded with a broad double ogee. South of it is a blocked arch I cannot explain. There is a round scoinson on the east side, splaying towards a narrower opening which is interrupted by the wall-plate of the corridor roof: apparently there have been stanchions across.

page 126 note 2 This now has an eighteenth-century mantelpiece.

page 126 note 3 The eastern one is blocked.

page 128 note 1 Archaeological Journal, ii, 87.Google Scholar

page 128 note 2 Sir Duckett, G. F., Visitations of English Cluniac Foundations, pp. 18, 28.Google Scholar

page 128 note 3 The Inventory was extracted from the original returns preserved in the Public Record Office by Miss Auden, H. M., and is printed in the Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Second Series, xii, 92–3Google Scholar.

page 129 note 1 Letters and State Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xv, no. III: cf. Rymer, , Foedera, vol. xiv, p. 659Google Scholar.

page 129 note 2 For the full extract and the light it throwson the parish church, see the author's Churches of Shropshire, 218-20.

page 130 note 1 It is transcribed in Walcott's, M. E. C.Four Minsters round the Wrekin, pp.94, 95Google Scholar.

page 130 note 2 Op. cit., p. 90.