constructed a great military road through the centre of their country
from Eburicum, which became the capital of the province, to the Tweed
and the country beyond. This road intersected the county of Durham from
north to south, and much of its course can still be traced from its
point of entry at Pierce Bridge, through Vinovium or Binchester in
Auckland, Epiacum or Lanchester, and Vindomora or Ebchester where it
passes over the Derwent into Northumberland. From Binchester a branch
road led by way of Chester-le-Street to the Pons Ælii or Newcastle,
which was continued by another branch to Jarrow and South Shields
passing along the south bank of the Tyne. This great military road and
the branch to Newcastle were cut through the dense forest which then
covered the whole of Durham and which continued through Saxon times to
form an almost impassable boundary, save by these roads, between the
closely associated provinces of Deira and Bernicia. The considerable
remains of the Roman towns still standing after the conquest of
Northumbria by the Angles were no doubt occupied by them as settlements;
and we find it stated in the life of St. Cuthbert that when he was
crossing the wild country of Durham and was like to be starved he found
succour from someone residing in the buildings still remaining at
Chester-le-Street. Along the sides of the roads, between the towns,
would be the ruins, not then entirely destroyed, of villas and other
buildings which may have formed places for rest or refuge to those who
like the saint traversed these dangerous forest paths, from which may
have been derived the names of localities still in use although the
ruins after which they were called have long since been forgotten. The
monks who were conveying the body of St. Cuthbert to its final
resting-place were directed to take it to Dunholm, and an accident
revealed to them the obscure place which then bore that name; and when
St. Godric was directed to repair to Finchale and there build himself a
hermitage, he only discovered there was a place so called by a chance
conversation he had with a monk at Durham.
The name of Finchale must have been well known in the ninth century if
we accept the common and reasonable belief that it was a place of
meeting of two or three important councils concerned with the affairs of
Northumbria. Its position in reference to the great road passing to the
South, its accessibility to the neighbouring town of Chester-le-Street
only three or four miles distant, and its comparative seclusion in the
great surrounding forest made it particularly suitable for such
meetings, which were held, as Bishop Stubbs says in his _Constitutional
History_, generally on the confines of states whence those assembled
might easily retire at nightfall to safer places. The councils held in
Northumbria during the latter part of the eighth century met at a time
when the country was not only disturbed by internal troubles, but
already threatened by the Danish pirates along the coast; and the forest
depths of Durham were safer for such meetings than the more open lands
of Northumberland or Yorkshire. The affix of "hale," the Saxon "hal,"
signifies the existence of a hall or some building, perhaps the remains
of a Roman villa, which would have served as a temporary shelter for the
members of a council, of which all traces have long since disappeared;
but, taking all the circumstances together, we may fairly assume that
Finchale was the place in which these Northumbrian councils met, and the
name still lingered in the locality when St. Godric established himself
within its glades on the banks of the rushing Wear.
This Godric, whose name is indissolubly associated with Finchale Priory,
although he was in no sense the founder of it, was as selfish and dirty
an old anchorite as ever attained the brevet rank of sainthood. Born
about 1065, the first thirty years of his life were spent as a pedlar
and sailor, during which he travelled far and wide, and met with many
adventures; and the remainder he spent in pilgrimages or a hermit-life
of penance and prayer. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ gives a
very complete history of him, compiled from all available sources, the
most important being the MS. life by his contemporary Nicholas of
Durham. While he was leading the roving life of a pedlar he was nearly
drowned in trying to catch a porpoise, and afterwards made a pilgrimage
to Rome, presumably in thankfulness for his rescue. But the time was
unfortunate, for it appears to have been about 1086, when Gregory VII.,
Hildebrand, had just died in exile, when the Anti-Pope Clement III. was
in possession of the Vatican, while the newly elected Pope Victor III.
was afraid to enter Rome, which then lay sunk in the most frightful
anarchy. The spectacle he beheld could scarcely then have induced him to
accept a religious vocation; and we find that for sixteen years
afterwards he led a seafaring life, trading between England, Scotland,
Flanders and Denmark, presently going so far afield as the Holy Land,
where the Chronicler’s description of him as "Gudericus pirata de regno
Angliae" sufficiently indicates the character of his occupation.
Returning thence, he paid a visit to the shrine of St. James of
Compostella; and when he reached home he accepted a menial position in
the house of a countryman, which suggests that he had not made much
money by his ventures. But with a restless spirit on him he went two
more pilgrimages to Rome, and the second time he took his mother with
him carrying her, it is said, on his shoulders where the way was
difficult. It was on this journey that he was accompanied by a lady of
wondrous beauty, whom he met on his way in London, who left him there
again on his return, and who nightly washed his feet; a story which
perhaps grew out of the custom of noble ladies, and which became more
common later on, of washing the feet of pilgrims in penance for some
special sin, in the manner described by Charles Reade in _The Cloister
and the Hearth_. On his return, somewhere about 1104, he settled for a
time at Carlisle, and then went to share his cell with a hermit named
Aelrice, by Wolsingham, and perhaps learn the lessons which were to
guide him in his future life. After a stay here of only seventeen months
the hermit died, and directed, he believed, by St. Cuthbert, Godric went
again on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after which he was instructed to
return and take up his residence at Finchale. Not knowing the locality
by name he returned to Durham where he resided for some time until a
chance conversation disclosed the whereabouts of the place.
When he at length retired to Finchale he seems to have found there the
remains of some ancient building, perhaps of a Roman villa, which may
have given its name to the place, and which may not only have formed a
sufficient residence for the hermit but for the other members of his
family who came to reside with him. The site of this dwelling was a
little nearer to Durham than is the present Priory, and the lands around
were a hunting-ground (the villa may have been a hunting-lodge)
belonging to Bishop Ralph Flambard who gave Godric permission to settle
here, so that possession must have been taken before 1128, the date of
the Bishop’s death. Adjoining to this residence he seems to have built
a wooden chapel which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and about
twenty years after he built another of stone which was consecrated by
Bishop William de St. Barbara, dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre and St.
John Baptist, and regularly served by a priest from Durham. As well as
the many self-imposed mortifications he endured, he was much troubled by
the serpents with which the place abounded, but which, at his command,
departed; but if we may believe the equally veracious story of "the
loathly worm of Lambton," a witch as well as a saint had a hand in that
achievement.
Godric, who was bedridden with rheumatism, the result of his senile
excesses, for eight years before his death, died in 1170, during the
episcopacy of Bishop Hugh de Puiset, or Pudsey, who appears to have
personally interested himself in the Finchale oratory; and under his
directions two monks from the Durham convent, named Henry and Reginald,
took up their residence in the place. In 1180 Pudsey confirmed the
priory of Durham in their possession of Finchale and added lands and
other benefactions to those already granted by Flambard; and thus no
doubt the attention of his son Henry was drawn to the place.
Henry de Pudsey, who may be regarded as the founder of Finchale, was
Bishop Pudsey’s eldest illegitimate son, and must have been born some
long time before his father succeeded to the see as the Bishop had other
children younger than Henry. His mother was Adelaide de Percy from whom
he appears to have inherited a good deal of land in Craven, as well as
the manors of Wingate and Haswell, with which he afterwards endowed
Finchale. At some period not long before the death of Godric he seems to
have been engaged in founding a small establishment for Austen Canons at
a place called Bakstanford not far from Neville’s Cross to which the
monks of Durham seem to have objected as an intrusion of a foreign order
within their immediate sphere of influence. Whether it was in
consequence of their protests or at the wish of his father is uncertain,
but he suspended his operations and transferred his endowments to
Finchale; and there he erected new monastic buildings for the
accommodation of a colony of Benedictines from Durham who, under Thomas
the Sacrist as Prior, took possession of the convent in 1196, a year
after the death of Bishop Pudsey. It was apparently the intention also
of Henry to rebuild Godric’s church in a more suitable manner, but in
1198 he became involved in some political troubles and went crusading in
1201 from which he did not return until 1212; and he left the rebuilding
of the church to be carried out by the community.
[Illustration: PISCINA IN CHOIR.]
The building of a new church seems to have been taken in hand in 1242, a
year memorable in the annals of Durham Cathedral as the one which saw
the beginning of the great eastern transept of the "Nine Altars," under
the auspices of Prior Thomas of Melsamby, of whom Canon Greenwell says:
"He was one of the greatest men who have sat in the prior’s chair at
Durham." The subservient position which Finchale held to the Durham
convent necessitated the assent of its Prior to so important an
undertaking; and it is not improbable that he may have pointed out the
necessity of the work and that his architect, Richard de Farnham, was
responsible for the design. Although of but modest dimensions for a
priory church, and but little longer and wider than the chapel which the
Brus family had recently built near by at Hartlepool, it was still on
too ambitious a scale for the limited resources of the convent; and the
work dragged on for a number of years, and was never completed in its
entirety. Its chief internal dimensions were--total length of nave and
choir 194 feet and of the transepts 99 feet; the widths of the nave and
choir were 23 feet and of the transepts 21 feet, while the width across
the unbuilt aisles would have been 52 feet. But the aisles would seem
never to have been finished, and though Mackensie Walcot pathetically
says that "it was the hand of the monk which pulled down the chapel of
the transept and the aisles of the choir and nave" it seems more than
likely that they were never begun, and that the idea was abandoned for
lack of funds soon after the nave and choir arcades had been completed.
It is probable that the choir only was roofed in in a temporary manner,
and that the nave and perhaps the transepts as well were not enclosed
until the works were seriously resumed in the next century. The wars
with Scotland caused much trouble within the county of Durham, and
doubtless affected the revenues of the priory, although there is nothing
to show that the monks were disturbed in any way by the invaders; but
twice the Scotch armies appeared upon the Wear, first under the Douglas
just before the treaty of Northampton made in 1328, and again in 1346
when they were defeated at the Battle of Neville’s Cross within sight of
the cathedral.
All works were suspended at Durham as well as at Finchale for the same
reasons, but with the return of peace and under the energetic sway of
Prior John Fossor they were resumed; and no doubt under his direct
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
influence and perhaps with his assistance the completion of the church
at Finchale was undertaken. The account rolls of the priory from 1348
begin to mention large quantities of material bought for the works and
money expended upon labour until 1372 when we may consider the fabric of
the church was finished. Instead of building the aisles as originally
intended, they filled up the moulded arches of the arcades with walling
in which they inserted traceried windows; and they seemed to have roofed
in the buildings at a level but little above the top of the arches
without any clerestory but sufficiently high to clear the great arches
of the crossing. Whether the crossing was vaulted is not quite certain,
but some stones found among the ruins seem to indicate remains of groin
ribs, and it was raised as a low tower, and covered in all probability
with a squat, leaded spire such as those which once stood on the western
towers of the cathedral. The windows which had their heads filled in
with reticulated tracery were, with those of Easington Church and those
inserted in the cathedral by Prior Fossor, among the most important
Decorated work in the county. The east end of the choir had originally
three lancet windows, but either at this time or later a large traceried
window was inserted in their place, the cost of reglazing which appears
in the accounts for 1488. A reredos to the high-altar was erected about
1376 during the period when the great Neville screen was in course of
construction in the cathedral. The exact position it occupied in the
choir is not now evident, as the position of the original double piscina
(see p. 135) and the sedilia left but little room for such an erection,
and it seems to have involved some alteration in the arrangements of the
east end. It is clear from existing remains that it was originally
intended to build a chapel on the east side of the north transept and
possibly a corresponding one to the south transept, the former with an
altar dedicated to St. Godric and the latter to the Blessed Virgin, but
these chapels were abandoned at the completion; the whole south transept
became the Lady Chapel, and it has been suggested that the shrine of St.
Godric was removed to the extreme east end of the choir, from which it
was cut off by the new reredos, in which case another piscina which has
disappeared must have been made for the service of the high-altar. The
ancient sedilia of which there were three were cut into and reduced to
two when the large traceried window was inserted in the south wall of
the choir, and our illustration (see p. 137) shows not only this
alteration but what is supposed to have been the base of the reredos.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH FROM THE NORTH-WEST.]
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE RUINS OF FINCHALE PRIORY.]
The arches, which had been left open on the eastern face of the
transepts, were filled in in the same manner as the nave arcades but
with two-light windows in the walling except in the case of the south
transept where there is a five-light window, with the heads uncusped,
beneath which was the altar of the Blessed Virgin. In 1469 sixty
shillings was paid for glazing this window. The west walls of the
transepts contain the only original windows left complete, the south
transept having a short lancet which looked over the cloister roof, and
the north transept has two narrow and lofty lancets. The lancets at the
north end of the transept were doubtless removed for a traceried window
as in the choir; but the triplets of the west front were left
undisturbed, and their remains and the beautifully simple west front,
together with the lancets of the transepts, are shown in our
illustration (see p. 139).
[Illustration: FRONT OF THE CHAPTER HOUSE.]
[Illustration: CRYPT UNDER REFECTORY.]
The conventual buildings were all placed on the south side of the church
and their arrangement, so far as they exist at the present time, is
shown on the general plan (see p. 140). They were to a great extent
erected at the same time as the church, that is during the thirteenth
century, but were far from completed, and the account rolls show that
they were not finished before the latter half
[Illustration: THE PRIOR’S LODGING.]
of the fifteenth century; but it is quite possible that some of the
buildings erected by Henry de Pudsey continued in use until the new ones
were ready for occupation. The chapter-house adjoins the south transept
and still retains its front over which one of the dormitory windows can
yet be seen (see p. 141). To the south of the cloister are considerable
remains of the refectory, raised, as at Durham, above a vaulted basement
(see p. 142); it was lighted by a fine range of lancet windows on either
side, and had a fireplace at the west end, and over it was another
chamber the use of which is not apparent. By the west front of the
church a guest-house for the poorer travellers was erected about 1464 in
two storeys, the lower one containing an oven; but the superior guests
were entertained in the Prior’s lodging. Although surrounded by earlier
buildings, the cloister was not completed until the second building
epoch, the north walk occupying the site of the proposed south aisle of
the nave, and the original doorway which had been built to be the south
door of the church now crosses the east walk at the north end.
The Prior’s lodgings (see p. 143) form an important and picturesque
group of buildings standing by themselves to the south-east of the
church, much in the same position as those of Durham. The vaulted
basement under the Prior’s hall and most of the substructure may be the
earliest part of the conventual buildings remaining, and earlier in date
than the church, though much of the upper storey which contains the
hall, camera and chapel belong to the subsequent periods. The low
building at the west end containing a fireplace, which has been
described as the Prior’s kitchen, seems to be the building which,
according to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1836, was the "spacious
entertainment room" which Mr. Prebendary Spence erected for the use of
the picnic parties which have in modern times pervaded the ruins. To the
north of the Prior’s lodging, separated from it only in the basement
story, is the building mentioned in the account rolls for 1460 under the
name of the "Douglestour." How it came by this name is uncertain, but as
the lower part of the building was standing in 1328 when Douglas and his
Scots made their raid across Northumberland to the banks of the Wear,
it may have gained it through some association with him. The upper
storey of the tower formed the Prior’s camera and had at the north end
an embayed window which commanded a charming prospect of the river and
the Cocken woods beyond. St. Godric was reputed to be the special patron
of women, and this encorbelled window-base was known by them as the
"wishing-chair"; but whatever was its charm, the spell was broken when
the monks left the convent at the Reformation.
At the Dissolution, as its income was less than £200 per annum, the
Priory was treated as one of the lesser monasteries and suppressed in
1536, when the site was granted to the Bishop of Durham, and the
buildings were left neglected; but their ruin was hastened by being
treated as a stone-quarry. It does not appear that the Priory was ever
purposely damaged otherwise, and it remains, after three centuries of
neglect, a more perfect and picturesque ruin than many of higher
importance and more beautiful architecture.
MONKWEARMOUTH AND JARROW
BY THE REV. D. S. BOUTFLOWER, M.A.
It is almost impossible for the student of history to dissociate the two
names. In their earliest origin, in the ups and downs of their long
existence, and almost, if not quite, in their present conditions, the
sister churches have met with one and the same experience. Their
foundations were laid within the short period of ten years; they have
arisen and decayed and revived (and that more than once) almost
simultaneously. They have shared together honour and neglect, wealth and
poverty. In all things and at all times the supreme desire of their
great founder has been fulfilled, and Monkwearmouth and Jarrow have been
one. Planted long ago as outposts of religious culture brought oversea
to the mouths of the Wear and the Tyne, the Churches of St. Peter and
St. Paul are now the centres of populous districts. Like other churches
around them, they have their own busy church life; but, unlike to and
above the rest, these two stand as witnesses of the antiquity and
continuity of the Christian faith in England. The churches where Bede
worshipped are still, at least in part, the churches of the twentieth
century. The Gospels which he expounded are heard at their Communion
services to-day.
Much of their history must be sought for and read in the buildings
themselves. The first thing they will tell us is that they belong to a
very early period of Saxon art. We have other evidence to assure us that
these were
[Illustration: MONKWEARMOUTH CHURCH.]
among the first stone churches in England, and to tell how masons were
brought from the Continent to erect them. The singular height of the
church at Monkwearmouth would lead us to the same conclusion. They were
thus churches of quite a peculiar type, a type destined to undergo many
modifications in later times. In Monkwearmouth and Jarrow you are face
to face with the earliest form of English ecclesiastical architecture.
We have no need to ask about the builders, or to wrangle over the date
of their foundation. There are darker and lighter periods in any
history; Monkwearmouth and Jarrow have, indeed, known much of both. But
the light shines clearly enough upon their early days. For Monkwearmouth
saw the birth and Jarrow the death of the patriarch of English
historians. Both places claim him as altogether their own. In the united
convent of St. Peter and St. Paul he spent practically the whole of his
life. Like all great men, he said little about himself; but he has much
to tell us about his twofold home. We turn gladly enough to the writings
of Bede, and specially to his Lives of the Abbots. We find ourselves at
once in the presence of one who knew how to observe and to describe, to
admire but never to condemn; one who loved to dwell upon the beautiful
in the characters and works of men; a conscientious man withal, who
sought out and told the truth. It is he that relates to us how
Monkwearmouth and Jarrow grew.
It was not fifty years since the Christian faith had been first taught
to the Northumbrians, and less than forty since its permanent
establishment by the preaching of the gentle Aidan, when there came back
to his native kingdom of Northumbria a man of noble birth and cultured
training, Biscop, called Benedict. He had wealth and interest at his
command, and, above all things, a fervent zeal concentrated upon a
definite purpose. It was an age that had recently witnessed a revival of
monasticism; the life of contemplation had led on to study; orthodoxy
[Illustration: OLD STONE AT MONKWEARMOUTH.]
was the aim of trained thinkers; emotional minds dwelt on the
devotedness of the saintly life. Biscop himself was a traveller and a
student; he desired to found his own monastery, and to bring to it
treasures from foreign lands. His relative, King Ecgfrid, granted him
for this purpose an estate at the mouth of the Wear (A.D. 672). There he
built the Church of St. Peter, of which the western wall and porch still
remain. He brought with him (as we have seen) masons, and also glaziers,
who restored to England a science that had long been lost. The building
was quite peculiar in its dimensions--some 60 feet long, 30 high, and 20
broad. The singular proportions of Monkwearmouth Church, which have long
puzzled antiquaries, appear to be explained by a sermon in the now
printed works of Bede, and possibly preached in the church itself on
some anniversary of its dedication. They correspond with those of
Solomon’s Temple, the units in this last case being cubits. There was a
truly mathematical love of numbers in the mind of Bede, and he is
evidently pleased to explain how the three dimensions above mentioned
set forth in allegory the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and
charity. The windows were small, and set high in the walls of the
building. You may see two of them, their splays adorned with baluster
shafts, in the western wall of the church. The south wall was adorned
with paintings representing scenes from the Gospel of St. John; a series
of pictures illustrating the Apocalypse occupied the northern wall. The
roof was adorned with portraits of the Virgin and of the Twelve
Apostles; the presumption is that it was in the form of a flat ceiling.
The whole arrangement of the building thus gave fair scope for light,
shelter, and decoration.