A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Vanishing England by P. H. Ditchfield

P >> P. H. Ditchfield >> Vanishing England




It would be an advantage to archaeology if every one were such a
careful and accurate observer of local antiquarian remains as the
Rural Dean of Stafford. Wherever we go we find similar deserted and
abandoned shrines. In Derbyshire alone there are over a hundred
destroyed or disused churches, of which Dr. Cox, the leading authority
on the subject, has published a list. Nottinghamshire abounds in
instances of the same kind. As late as 1892 the church at Colston
Bassett was deliberately turned into a ruin. There are only mounds and a
few stones to show the site of the parish church of Thorpe-in-the-fields,
which in the seventeenth century was actually used as a beer-shop. In
the fields between Elston and East Stoke is a disused church with a
south Norman doorway. The old parochial chapel of Aslacton was long
desecrated, and used in comparatively recent days as a beer-shop. The
remains of it have, happily, been reclaimed, and now serve as a
mission-room. East Anglia, famous for its grand churches, has to mourn
over many which have been lost, many that are left roofless and
ivy-clad, and some ruined indeed, though some fragment has been made
secure enough for the holding of divine service. Whitling has a
roofless church with a round Norman tower. The early Norman church of
St. Mary at Kirby Bedon has been allowed to fall into decay, and for
nearly two hundred years has been ruinous. St. Saviour's Church,
Surlingham, was pulled down at the beginning of the eighteenth century
on the ground that one church in the village was sufficient for its
spiritual wants, and its materials served to mend roads.

A strange reason has been given for the destruction of several of
these East Anglian churches. In Norfolk there were many recusants,
members of old Roman Catholic families, who refused in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to obey the law requiring them to attend
their parish church. But if their church were in ruins no service
could be held, and therefore they could not be compelled to attend.
Hence in many cases the churches were deliberately reduced to a
ruinous state. Bowthorpe was one of these unfortunate churches which
met its fate in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It stands in a
farm-yard, and the nave made an excellent barn and the steeple a
dovecote. The lord of the manor was ordered to restore it at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. This he did, and for a time it
was used for divine service. Now it is deserted and roofless, and
sleeps placidly girt by a surrounding wall, a lonely shrine. The
church of St. Peter, Hungate, at Norwich, is of great historical
interest and contains good architectural features, including a very
fine roof. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by John Paston and
Margaret, his wife, whose letters form part of that extraordinary
series of medieval correspondence which throws so much light upon the
social life of the period. The church has a rudely carved record of
their work outside the north door. This unhappy church has fallen into
disuse, and it has been proposed to follow the example of the London
citizens to unite the benefice with another and to destroy the
building. Thanks to the energy and zeal of His Highness Prince
Frederick Duleep Singh, delay in carrying out the work of destruction
has been secured, and we trust that his efforts to save the building
will be crowned with the success they deserve.

Not far from Norwich are the churches of Keswick and Intwood. Before
1600 A.D. the latter was deserted and desecrated, being used for a
sheep-fold, and the people attended service at Keswick. Then Intwood
was restored to its sacred uses, and poor Keswick church was compelled
to furnish materials for its repair. Keswick remained ruinous until a
few years ago, when part of it was restored and used as a cemetery
chapel. Ringstead has two ruined churches, St. Andrew's and St.
Peter's. Only the tower of the latter remains. Roudham church two
hundred years ago was a grand building, as its remains plainly
testify. It had a thatched roof, which was fired by a careless
thatcher, and has remained roofless to this day. Few are acquainted
with the ancient hamlet of Liscombe, situated in a beautiful Dorset
valley. It now consists of only one or two houses, a little Norman
church, and an old monastic barn. The little church is built of flint,
stone, and large blocks of hard chalk, and consists of a chancel and
nave divided by a Transition-Norman arch with massive rounded columns.
There are Norman windows in the chancel, with some later work
inserted. A fine niche, eight feet high, with a crocketed canopy,
stood at the north-east corner of the chancel, but has disappeared.
The windows of the nave and the west doorway have perished. It has
been for a long time desecrated. The nave is used as a bakehouse.
There is a large open grate, oven, and chimney in the centre, and the
chancel is a storehouse for logs. The upper part of the building has
been converted into an upper storey and divided into bedrooms, which
have broken-down ceilings. The roof is of thatch. Modern windows and a
door have been inserted. It is a deplorable instance of terrible
desecration.

The growth of ivy unchecked has caused many a ruin. The roof of the
nave and south aisle of the venerable church of Chingford, Essex, fell
a few years ago entirely owing to the destructive ivy which was
allowed to work its relentless will on the beams, tiles, and rafters
of this ancient structure.

Besides those we have mentioned there are about sixty other ruined
churches in Norfolk, and in Suffolk many others, including the
magnificent ruins of Covehithe, Flixton, Hopton, which was destroyed
only forty-four years ago through the burning of its thatched roof,
and the Old Minster, South Elmham.

Attempts have been made by the National Trust and the Society for the
Protection of Ancient Buildings to save Kirkstead Chapel, near
Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. It is one of the very few surviving
examples of the _capella extra portas_, which was a feature of every
Cistercian abbey, where women and other persons who were not allowed
within the gates could hear Mass. The abbey was founded in 1139, and
the chapel, which is private property, is one of the finest examples
of Early English architecture remaining in the country. It is in a
very decaying condition. The owner has been approached, and the
officials of the above societies have tried to persuade him to repair
it himself or to allow them to do so. But these negotiations have
hitherto failed. It is very deplorable when the owners of historic
buildings should act in this "dog-in-the-manger" fashion, and surely
the time has come when the Government should have power to
compulsorily acquire such historic monuments when their natural
protectors prove themselves to be incapable or unwilling to preserve
and save them from destruction.

We turn from this sorry page of wilful neglect to one that records the
grand achievement of modern antiquaries, the rescue and restoration of
the beautiful specimen of Saxon architecture, the little chapel of St.
Lawrence at Bradford-on-Avon. Until 1856 its existence was entirely
unknown, and the credit of its discovery was due to the Rev. Canon
Jones, Vicar of Bradford. At the Reformation with the dissolution of
the abbey at Shaftesbury it had passed into lay hands. The chancel was
used as a cottage. Round its walls other cottages arose. Perhaps part
of the building was at one time used as a charnel-house, as in an old
deed it is called the Skull House. In 1715 the nave and porch were
given to the vicar to be used as a school. But no one suspected the
presence of this exquisite gem of Anglo-Saxon architecture, until
Canon Jones when surveying the town from the height of a neighbouring
hill recognized the peculiarity of the roof and thought that it might
indicate the existence of a church. Thirty-seven years ago the
Wiltshire antiquaries succeeded in purchasing the building. They
cleared away the buildings, chimney-stacks, and outhouses that had
grown up around it, and revealed the whole beauties of this lovely
shrine. Archaeologists have fought many battles over it as to its date.
Some contend that it is the identical church which William of
Malmesbury tells us St. Aldhelm built at Bradford-on-Avon about 700
A.D., others assert that it cannot be earlier than the tenth century.
It was a monastic cell attached to the Abbey of Malmesbury, but
Ethelred II gave it to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1001 as a secure
retreat for her nuns if Shaftesbury should be threatened by the
ravaging Danes. We need not describe the building, as it is well
known. Our artist has furnished us with an admirable illustration of
it. Its great height, its characteristic narrow Saxon doorways, heavy
plain imposts, the string-courses surrounding the building, the
arcades of pilasters, the carved figures of angels are some of its
most important features. It is cheering to find that amid so much that
has vanished we have here at Bradford a complete Saxon church that
differs very little from what it was when it was first erected.

[Illustration: Saxon Doorway in St. Lawrence's Church,
Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.]

Other Saxon remains are not wanting. Wilfrid's Crypt at Hexham, that
at Ripon, Brixworth Church, the church within the precincts of Dover
Castle, the towers of Barnack, Barton-upon-Humber, Stow, Earl's
Barton, Sompting, Stanton Lacy show considerable evidences of Saxon
work. Saxon windows with their peculiar baluster shafts can be seen at
Bolam and Billingham, Durham; St. Andrew's, Bywell, Monkwearmouth,
Ovington, Sompting, St. Mary Junior, York, Hornby, Wickham (Berks),
Waithe, Holton-le-Clay, Glentworth and Clee (Lincoln), Northleigh,
Oxon, and St. Alban's Abbey. Saxon arches exist at Worth, Corhampton,
Escomb, Deerhurst, St. Benet's, Cambridge, Brigstock, and Barnack.
Triangular arches remain at Brigstock, Barnack, Deerhurst, Aston
Tirrold, Berks. We have still some Saxon fonts at Potterne, Wilts;
Little Billing, Northants; Edgmond and Bucknell, Shropshire; Penmon,
Anglesey; and South Hayling, Hants. Even Saxon sundials exist at
Winchester, Corhampton, Bishopstone, Escomb, Aldborough, Edston, and
Kirkdale. There is also one at Daglingworth, Gloucestershire. Some
hours of the Saxon's day in that village must have fled more swiftly
than others, as all the radii are placed at the same angle. Even some
mural paintings by Saxon artists exist at St. Mary's, Guildford; St.
Martin's, Canterbury; and faint traces at Britford, Headbourne,
Worthing, and St. Nicholas, Ipswich, and some painted consecration
crosses are believed to belong to this period.

Recent investigations have revealed much Saxon work in our churches,
the existence of which had before been unsuspected. Many circumstances
have combined to obliterate it. The Danish wars had a disastrous
effect on many churches reared in Saxon times. The Norman Conquest
caused many of them to be replaced by more highly finished structures.
But frequently, as we study the history written in the stonework of
our churches, we find beneath coatings of stucco the actual walls
built by Saxon builders, and an arch here, a column there, which link
our own times with the distant past, when England was divided into
eight kingdoms and when Danegelt was levied to buy off the marauding
strangers.

It is refreshing to find these specimens of early work in our
churches. Since then what destruction has been wrought, what havoc
done upon their fabric and furniture! At the Reformation iconoclasm
raged with unpitying ferocity. Everybody from the King to the
churchwardens, who sold church plate lest it should fall into the
hands of the royal commissioners, seems to have been engaged in
pillaging churches and monasteries. The plunder of chantries and
guilds followed. Fuller quaintly describes this as "the last dish of
the course, and after cheese nothing is to be expected." But the
coping-stone was placed on the vast fabric of spoliation by sending
commissioners to visit all the cathedrals and parish churches, and
seize the superfluous plate and ornaments for the King's use. Even
quite small churches possessed many treasures which the piety of many
generations had bestowed upon them.

There is a little village in Berkshire called Boxford, quite a small
place. Here is the list of church goods which the commissioners found
there, and which had escaped previous ravages:--

"One challice, a cross of copper & gilt, another cross of timber
covered with brass, one cope of blue velvet embroidered with
images of angles, one vestment of the same suit with an albe of
Lockeram,[22] two vestments of Dornexe,[23] and three other very
old, two old & coarse albes of Lockeram, two old copes of Dornexe,
iiij altar cloths of linen cloth, two corporals with two cases
whereof one is embroidered, two surplices, & one rochet, one bible
& the paraphrases of Erasmus in English, seven banners of lockeram
& one streamer all painted, three front cloths for altars whereof
one of them is with panes of white damask & black satin, & the
other two of old vestments, two towels of linen, iiij candlesticks
of latten[24] & two standertes[25] before the high altar of
latten, a lent vail[26] before the high altar with panes blue and
white, two candlesticks of latten and five branches, a peace,[27]
three great bells with one saunce bell xx, one canopy of cloth, a
covering of Dornixe for the Sepulchre, two cruets of pewter, a
holy-water pot of latten, a linen cloth to draw before the rood.
And all the said parcels safely to be kept & preserved, & all the
same & every parcel thereof to be forthcoming at all times when it
shall be of them [the churchwardens] required."

[22] A fine linen cloth made in Brittany (cf. _Coriolanus_, Act
ii. sc. 1).

[23] A rich sort of stuff interwoven with gold and silver, made at
Tournay, which was formerly called Dorneck, in Flanders.

[24] An alloy of copper and zinc.

[25] Large standard candlesticks.

[26] The Lent cloth, hung before the altar during Lent.

[27] A Pax.

This inventory of the goods of one small church enables us to judge of
the wealth of our country churches before they were despoiled. Of
private spoliators their name was legion. The arch-spoliator was
Protector Somerset, the King's uncle, Edward Seymour, formerly Earl of
Hertford and then created Duke of Somerset. He ruled England for three
years after King Henry's death. He was a glaring and unblushing
church-robber, setting an example which others were only too ready to
follow. Canon Overton[28] tells how Somerset House remains as a
standing memorial of his rapacity. In order to provide materials for
building it he pulled down the church of St. Mary-le-Strand and three
bishops' houses, and was proceeding also to pull down the historical
church of St. Margaret, Westminster; but public opinion was too strong
against him, the parishioners rose and beat off his workmen, and he
was forced to desist, and content himself with violating and
plundering the precincts of St. Paul's. Moreover, the steeple and most
of the church of St. John of Jerusalem, Smithfield, were mined and
blown up with gunpowder that the materials might be utilized for the
ducal mansion in the Strand. He turned Glastonbury, with all its
associations dating from the earliest introduction of Christianity
into our island, into a worsted manufactory, managed by French
Protestants. Under his auspices the splendid college of St.
Martin-le-Grand in London was converted into a tavern, and St.
Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, served the scarcely less incongruous
purpose of a Parliament House. All this he did, and when his
well-earned fall came the Church fared no better under his successor,
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards Duke of Northumberland.

[28] _History of the Church in England_, p. 401.

Another wretch was Robert, Earl of Sussex, to whom the King gave the
choir of Atleburgh, in Norfolk, because it belonged to a college.
"Being of a covetous disposition, he not only pulled down and spoiled
the chancel, but also pulled up many fair marble gravestones of his
ancestors with monuments of brass upon them, and other fair good
pavements, and carried them and laid them for his hall, kitchen, and
larder-house." The church of St. Nicholas, Yarmouth, has many
monumental stones, the brasses of which were in 1551 sent to London to
be cast into weights and measures for the use of the town. The shops
of the artists in brass in London were full of broken brass memorials
torn from tombs. Hence arose the making of palimpsest brasses, the
carvers using an old brass and on the reverse side cutting a memorial
of a more recently deceased person.

After all this iconoclasm, spoliation, and robbery it is surprising
that anything of value should have been left in our churches. But
happily some treasures escaped, and the gifts of two or three
generations added others. Thus I find from the will of a good
gentleman, Mr. Edward Ball, that after the spoliation of Barkham
Church he left the sum of five shillings for the providing of a
processional cross to be borne before the choir in that church, and I
expect that he gave us our beautiful Elizabethan chalice of the date
1561. The Church had scarcely recovered from its spoliation before
another era of devastation and robbery ensued. During the Cromwellian
period much destruction was wrought by mad zealots of the Puritan
faction. One of these men and his doings are mentioned by Dr. Berwick
in his _Querela Cantabrigiensis_:--

"One who calls himself John [it should be William] Dowsing and by
Virtue of a pretended Commission, goes about y^{e} country like a
Bedlam, breaking glasse windows, having battered and beaten downe
all our painted glasses, not only in our Chappels, but (contrary
to order) in our Publique Schools, Colledge Halls, Libraries, and
Chambers, mistaking, perhaps, y^{e} liberall Artes for Saints
(which they intend in time to pull down too) and having (against
an order) defaced and digged up y^{e} floors of our Chappels, many
of which had lien so for two or three hundred years together, not
regarding y^{e} dust of our founders and predecessors who likely
were buried there; compelled us by armed Souldiers to pay forty
shillings a Colledge for not mending what he had spoyled and
defaced, or forth with to goe to prison."

We meet with the sad doings of this wretch Dowsing in various places
in East Anglia. He left his hideous mark on many a fair church. Thus
the churchwardens of Walberswick, in Suffolk, record in their
accounts:--

"1644, April 8th, paid to Martin Dowson, that came with the
troopers to our church, about the taking down of Images and
Brasses off Stones 6 0."

"1644 paid that day to others for taking up the brasses of grave
stones before the officer Dowson came 1 0."

[Illustration: St. George's Church, Great Yarmouth]

The record of the ecclesiastical exploits of William Dowsing has been
preserved by the wretch himself in a diary which he kept. It was
published in 1786, and the volume provides much curious reading. With
reference to the church of Toffe he says:--

"Will: Disborugh Church Warden Richard Basly and John Newman
Cunstable, 27 Superstitious pictures in glass and ten other in
stone, three brass inscriptions, Pray for y^{e} Soules, and a
Cross to be taken of the Steeple (6s. 8d.) and there was divers
Orate pro Animabus in ye windows, and on a Bell, Ora pro Anima
Sanctae Catharinae."

"_Trinity Parish, Cambridge_, M. Frog, Churchwarden, December 25,
we brake down 80 Popish pictures, and one of Christ and God y^{e}
Father above."

"At _Clare_ we brake down 1000 pictures superstitious."

"_Cochie_, there were divers pictures in the Windows which we
could not reach, neither would they help us to raise the ladders."

"1643, Jan^{y} 1, Edwards parish, we digged up the steps, and
brake down 40 pictures, and took off ten superstitious
inscriptions."

It is terrible to read these records, and to imagine all the beautiful
works of art that this ignorant wretch ruthlessly destroyed. To all
the inscriptions on tombs containing the pious petition _Orate pro
anima_--his ignorance is palpably displayed by his _Orate pro
animabus_--he paid special attention. Well did Mr. Cole observe
concerning the last entry in Dowsing's diary:--

"From this last Entry we may clearly see to whom we are obliged
for the dismantling of almost all the gravestones that had brasses
on them, both in town and country: a sacrilegious sanctified
rascal that was afraid, or too proud, to call it St. Edward's
Church, but not ashamed to rob the dead of their honours and the
Church of its ornaments. W.C."

He tells also of the dreadful deeds that were being done at Lowestoft
in 1644:--

"In the same year, also, on the 12th of June, there came one
Jessop, with a commission from the Earl of Manchester, to take
away from gravestones all inscriptions on which he found _Orate
pro anima_--a wretched Commissioner not able to read or find out
that which his commission enjoyned him to remove--he took up in
our Church so much brasse, as he sold to Mr. Josiah Wild for five
shillings, which was afterwards (contrary to my knowledge) runn
into the little bell that hangs in the Town-house. There were
taken up in the Middle Ayl twelve pieces belonging to twelve
generations of the Jettours."

The same scenes were being enacted in many parts of England.
Everywhere ignorant commissioners were rampaging about the country
imitating the ignorant ferocity of this Dowsing and Jessop. No wonder
our churches were bare, pillaged, and ruinated. Moreover, the
conception of art and the taste for architecture were dead or dying,
and there was no one who could replace the beautiful objects which
these wretches destroyed or repair the desolation they had caused.

Another era of spoliation set in in more recent times, when the
restorers came with vitiated taste and the worst ideals to reconstruct
and renovate our churches which time, spoliation, and carelessness had
left somewhat the worse for wear. The Oxford Movement taught men to
bestow more care upon the houses of God in the land, to promote His
honour by more reverent worship, and to restore the beauty of His
sanctuary. A rector found his church in a dilapidated state and talked
over the matter with the squire. Although the building was in a sorry
condition, with a cracked ceiling, hideous galleries, and high pews
like cattle-pens, it had a Norman doorway, some Early English carved
work in the chancel, a good Perpendicular tower, and fine Decorated
windows. These two well-meaning but ignorant men decided that a
brand-new church would be a great improvement on this old tumble-down
building. An architect was called in, or a local builder; the plan of
a new church was speedily drawn, and ere long the hammers and axes
were let loose on the old church and every vestige of antiquity
destroyed. The old Norman font was turned out of the church, and
either used as a cattle-trough or to hold a flower-pot in the rectory
garden. Some of the beautifully carved stones made an excellent
rockery in the squire's garden, and old woodwork, perchance a
fourteenth-century rood-screen, encaustic tiles bearing the arms of
the abbey with which in former days the church was connected,
monuments and stained glass, are all carted away and destroyed, and
the triumph of vandalism is complete.

That is an oft-told tale which finds its counterpart in many towns and
villages, the entire and absolute destruction of the old church by
ignorant vandals who work endless mischief and know not what they do.
There is the village of Little Wittenham, in our county of Berks, not
far from Sinodun Hill, an ancient earthwork covered with trees, that
forms so conspicuous an object to the travellers by the Great Western
Railway from Didcot to Oxford. About forty years ago terrible things
were done in the church of that village. The vicar was a Goth. There
was a very beautiful chantry chapel on the south side of the choir,
full of magnificent marble monuments to the memory of various members
of the Dunce family. This family, once great and powerful, whose great
house stood hard by on the north of the church--only the terraces of
which remain--is now, it is believed, extinct. The vicar thought that
he might be held responsible for the dilapidations of this old
chantry; so he pulled it down, and broke all the marble tombs with
axes and hammers. You can see the shattered remains that still show
signs of beauty in one of the adjoining barns. Some few were set up in
the tower, the old font became a pig-trough, the body of the church
was entirely renewed, and vandalism reigned supreme. In our county of
Berks there were at the beginning of the last century 170 ancient
parish churches. Of these, thirty have been pulled down and entirely
rebuilt, six of them on entirely new sites; one has been burnt down,
one disused; before 1890 one hundred were restored, some of them most
drastically, and several others have been restored since, but with
greater respect to old work.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Various - "Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851"

Various - "Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892"

Herbert David Croly - "The Promise Of American Life"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841"