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VI.—The Architecture of the Premonstratensians, with special reference to their Buildings in England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2011
Extract
It has been more than once remarked that the study of medieval monastic architecture and arrangement can be better studied in this country than anywhere on the continent of Europe, and for this there are several sufficient reasons. In England the Reformation, and with it the suppression of the monasteries, coincided in date with the general abandonment of Gothic architecture and the dawn of the English Renaissance. Consequently, any surviving remains of a monastic house in this country (except where the buildings were converted into a mansion) are of the period when monachism was a living force, and before its vitality had been sapped by the commendatory system of government and its architecture translated into the foreign language ofthe Renaissance. Furthermore, compared with the continent, this country, after the Reformation, suffered comparatively little from the effects of civil strife; such strife as took place was less religious than political, and in it the monasteries had been too long untenanted to be a symbol of Romanism and called forth no animosity even in the Puritan soldiery. The matter was quite otherwise in both France and Germany, where the wars of religion inflicted grievous harm on the corpus of ecclesiastical building when the pendulum swung to the Protestant side. The wider tolerance of the later seventeenth and of the eighteenth century was even more destructive, in these countries, to monastic architecture of the middle ages, for with a more settled social state a new era of monastic building began which transformed the vast majority of French, Belgian, and South German convents into examples, often magnificent enough, of the contemporary Renaissance style in which all trace of the medieval arrangement is lost.
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1923
References
page 119 note 1 Hugo, C. L., Sacri et Canonici Ordinis Premonstratensis Annales (1734), i, prefaceGoogle Scholar. The circaries were as follows:-1. France, 2. Floreffe, 3. Ponthieu, 4. Brabant, 5. Flanders, 6. Westphalia, 7. Wad-gassen, 8. Ilfeld, 9. Lorraine, 10. N. England and Scotland, 11. Mid. England, 12. S. England, 13. Ireland, 14. Normandy, 15. Gascony, 16. Spain, 17. Burgundy, 18. Auvergne, 19. Friesland, 20. Suabia and Bavaria, 21. Bohemia and Moravia, 22. Poland, 23. Livonia, 24. Hungary, 25. Denmark and Norway, 26. Slavonia, 27. Greece and Jerusalem, 28. Rome, 29. Saxony.
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page 121 note 3 The origin of this engraving is unknown. A second engraving in Hugo's history of the order shows the buildings after the reconstruction of the domestic part of the convent. The existing building, apparently the abbot's house, is a fine Renaissance structure classed as a ‘Monument historique’ and is used as a Lunatic Asylum.
page 121 note 4 Plans in Congrés Archéologique de France, 1912Google Scholar, and Bull. Soc. Acad. de Laon, xviii, p. 161Google Scholar. The projections at the ends and sides of the presbytery are a local feature, not uncommon in the churches of the Laonnais and Soissonnais.
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page 122 note 4 Plan in R. Maere, op. cit.
page 122 note 5 As at Jericho, Brandenburg, and Havelburg.
page 122 note 6 Plan in Kunstdenkmäler d. Rhein. Provinz iii, Neuss, Kreis, p. 27 et seqGoogle Scholar.
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page 124 note 1 Alnwick, Blanchland, Cockersand, Coverham, Egglestone, Easby, and Shap; and in Scotland, Dryburgh, Feme, Holywood, Tongland, Soulseat, and Whithorn.
page 124 note 2 Barlings, Beauchief, Croxton, Dale, Hagnaby, Hales Owen, Lavendon, Newbo, Newhouse, Sulby, Talley, Tupholme, and Welbeck. The list of houses in the Circary of Middle England is given in documents of 1311 and 1470, printed in Collectanea Anglo-Premonstratensia, i, pp. 64 and 76Google Scholar, and hence by elimination the lists of the N. and S. Circaries are obtained.
page 124 note 3 Bayham, Beeleigh, St. Radegund, Dereham, Dureford, Langdon, Langley, Leiston, Torre, Titchfield, and Wendling.
page 124 note 4 These may also have existed at Easby before the rebuilding of the arcades.
page 124 note 5 At Langdon one of the solid walls between the chapels in the N. transept was uncovered in the excavations of 1882 but its significance escaped attention. The extent of the original E. arm is indeterminate. At Torre the extreme length of the E. respond of the nave arcade and the presence of a plinth to the aisle wall indicate that this aisle was an addition.
page 125 note 1 Aisleless Cistercian naves occurred at Waverley and Tintern in England, Gray in Ireland, Lyse in Norway, etc.
page 125 note 2 Gife, M. E.-L., ‘Postel, son abbaye et son eglise’, in Annales Acad. d'Archeologie de Belgique, xxviii (1872), p. 133Google Scholar; the modern transepts are not differentiated on the plan.
page 125 note 3 What appears to be a Lady chapel of the normal type has, however, recently been excavated on the north side of the presbytery at Cockersand. It measured 36 ft. by 17 ft.
page 126 note 1 See an engraving in Sanderus, A., Le grand theatre sacre du duche de Brabant, ii, p. 101Google Scholar. The engraving of Pare Abbey in the same work shows no masonry tower.
page 126 note 2 See a late eighteenth-century engraving reproduced in J. E. Jansen, op. cit., i, p. 122.
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page 126 note 4 As it has been stated (Arch. Cant, xiv) that this tower is of one build with the adjoining church, the following conclusive evidence is given in support of the above statement:—(a) there is a straight joint between the north and west walls of the tower and the adjoining transept and nave; (b) there is a thirteenth-century external window in the west wall of the transept and now opening into the dark east annexe of the tower; (c) the south wall of the tower shows evident marks of thickening against the pre-existing nave, and (d) the details of the two doorways are of the fourteenth century, except for an obviously reused label over the south doorway.
page 126 note 5 See engraving in Dugdale, , Mon. Ang. (1830), vi, p. 915Google Scholar. Only the north-west pier of this tower is still standing.
page 126 note 6 See post, p. 140. The inventory deals with the tower after the church and mentions living-rooms in it, a fact hardly compatible with a position over the crossing but paralleled in the west tower at Langley.
page 127 note 1 e.g. Durham, Wenlock, Lewes, Exeter St. Nicholas, and Christchurch Canterbury (twelfth-century plan) in England, Melrose in Scotland, and Mellifont and Dunbrody in Ireland.
page 127 note 2 M. Modde, op. cit., plan, etc. Twelfth-century cloisters survive at Magdeburg and Hamborn (Rhein-Provinz), and a good late twelfth-century example at Basse-Fontaine (Aube), see Arnaud, A.-F., Voyage archéologiqne et pittoresque dans le Département de Aube (1837), p. 63Google Scholar.
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page 127 note 5 This is the only example in this country still standing intact, except the plain rectangular structure at Dryburgh.
page 127 note 6 See list in Hants Field Club, iii, p. 325Google Scholar.
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page 129 note 3 Alnwick, Easby, W. Langdon, St. Radegund, and Shap. Small remains of other infirmaries have been found at Langley and Croxton.
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page 139 note 1 See V.C.H. Suffolk, ii, p. 117Google Scholar.
page 139 note 2 P. R. O. Land Revenue Bundle 1393, file 136 no. 1, printed in Suff. Inst. of Arch, viii, p. 102Google Scholar. Here the dedication of one chapel (as pointed out by Sir W. H. St. J. Hope) is incorrectly given as St. Margaret.