The Vanished Cloisters
There is little now to be seen of the old Priory spoken of by Leland.
Approached from the hamlet, the existing Priory Church of Little
Dunmow, with its roof of staring blue slates, its factory
chimney-like bell tower and mean walling, attracts attention only by
its oddity. But when one walks up the farm land from which the south
side of the building may be viewed, one receives a different
impression. In the architecture now seen there are the
lines where beauty lingers,
the lines which tell of a splendid structure. The remains of no
common building stand in solitary domination of these quiet corn
fields.
One enters the church and is surprised, as Mr. Hartley has written,
by that
indefinable feeling which ever strikes us on our entry into a
spacious and beautiful edifice. That the building is a fragment of
what must have been a structure of extreme beauty becomes evident.
Columns of such dimensions and arches of such design were never
intended for purpose so slight as the support of the present roof;
windows of such size and elegance were made for shedding light upon a
much more spacious interior than we now find.
But when account is taken of all the stately arches and columns, and
the beautifully cut ornament thereon, now embodied in the brick
rubble and plaster which we owe to Georgian and Early Victorian
dulness and parsimony, no more of the old Priory survives for our
refreshment than the south aisle of the choir. The stones of the
structure that were hewn and raised by some "Master Henry" or "Master
Hubert the Mason," the timbers that some "Master John the Carpenter"
industriously wrought, even the marble and alabaster which crowned
the work have long been torn away. They are come upon now, in
fragments in the walls and floors and roofs of cottages and barns
which adjoin the church.
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[Illustration: SCENE AT THE MODERN CEREMONY.]
SCENE AT THE MODERN CEREMONY.--The Trial Proceeding. Judge in the
Middle. Tow pairs of claimants on either side. Counsel for the
claimants speaking; counsel for the Bacon seated. Jury of maidens
and bachelors on extreme right. Highly entertained public in front
at 1_s._ a head.
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[Illustration: PROCESSION AFTER THE MODERN CEREMONY.]
PROCESSION AFTER THE MODERN CEREMONY.--Two couples in chairs, recent
imitations of the original in the Priory Church. The Bacon is
swinging from poles behind the second couple.
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Where the monastic building once extended nothing remains but the out
of sight foundations which try the patience of the digger of land
drains. Labourers' patches of potatoes and greens range over
consecrated ground. The fishponds of the monks, to which they had
recourse "on Fridays when they fasted," grow grass or bear the burden
of a railway embankment. Tradition and propinquity, but these only,
point to venerable cottages and a farmhouse as marking the position
of the Priory's Manor house and Grange.
Of memorials of the Flitch ceremony two are shown--the oaken seat, in
which successful applicants for the Bacon were chaired, and the
stones on which they knelt.
The chair is kept within the altar rails. Two persons could no doubt
be squeezed into it. There are holes in the chair through which the
bearers' poles went.
Whether the chair belonged originally to the Prior and was actually
used when he gave away the Flitch, or was the property of one of the
Lords of the Manor, who, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries,
continued the custom, has been disputed. But there is evidence
pointing to the chair having been employed on the occasion of the
Manorial awards only. Mr. F. Roe, in his _Old Oak Furniture_, though
he attributes the chair to the thirteenth century, doubts very much
whether it can have been used from the beginning for the ritual of
the Flitch. For this reason--
The outer right-hand side of the chair is carved with wheel-like
decorations, but on the left-hand side the surface of the wood is
plain, and various mortices are visible, which show that the seat is
part of a larger structure, being, in fact, the end unit of a series
of stalls. The truth is that the chair used by merry-makers at the
ceremony of the Flitch, is actually a waif from the conventual
establishment. It is, one is bound to admit, a remarkable
coincidence that the chair and ceremony should have had their origin
in the same reign, but the fact that it is only part of some fitted
furniture, precludes the possibility of it having been designed for
the purpose for which it was used in later years.
In the accounts available of the awarding of the Flitch after the
closing of the religious houses by Henry VIII we hear of "two great
stones near the Church door" on which the applicant for the Bacon had
to kneel. Whether they are still in existence is uncertain.
What are to-day pointed out as the stones on which the Pilgrims knelt
may possibly be the bases of two of the many columns which local
vandals in want of building material have demolished. They are
certainly not "sharp," as some chroniclers describe the stones to
have been. A pair of stones like those in the Church are to be seen
in Little Dunmow village.
In Hone's _Table Book_, published about the time of the accession of
Queen Victoria, it is said that "the two great stones" were then in
the Church. But whether the writer of this statement had actually
seen them for himself does not appear. It may perhaps be mentioned
that, as the first presentations of the Bacon were made seemingly not
to wedded pairs but to husbands only, there could not be at this
early stage of the history of the Custom any need for "two" stones.
The present stones are each only about half a foot in diameter and
the right distance apart for one person to kneel on them. They could
hardly be described as "great" stones.