Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury Part 2

In January, 1795, it was agreed at a parish meeting that "the church shall be whitewashed as soon as convenient, and other repairs be done ... that shall appear necessary." The part of the church that was in use was re-pewed, galleries were put up in the two transepts, and in the easternmost bay of the aisles of the nave.

During the years 1824-30, the exterior of the tower, probably untouched from the date of its first completion, was repaired, all decayed stones being made good. The windows which had been partially bricked up were opened, and shelving stones inserted instead. One of the pinnacles was entirely rebuilt, and the three others repaired. The turrets on the west front were also restored.

At this time also the transept walls and the roofs were repaired and strengthened. The interior of the church previous to its colour-washing was sc.r.a.ped and cleaned, and the walls and pillars were repaired, pointed, and cemented. All the tombs were cleaned and most of them restored. The greater part of the nave was paved with Painswick stone, and in the rest of the church the gravestones were relaid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WEST END IN 1840.

By _Rev. J.L. Pet.i.t_.]

In 1825 the vicar and churchwardens posted to Worcester, that they might inspect the colouring of the Cathedral and other churches there with a view to decorating the Abbey. The committee decided in favour of colour-washing the Abbey, and this was done three years later.

1828. The monuments of Sir Hugh le Despenser and Sir Guy de Brien, being very dilapidated, were extensively repaired. Most of the b.u.t.tresses and pinnacles were entirely renewed. All this restoration involved the outlay of a considerable amount of money, and if more had been forthcoming more would have been undertaken, such as the restoration of all the tombs and chapels, and the old windows in the choir.

The font in 1828 was removed from the nave and placed in the apsidal chapel in the south transept, from which position it was again removed in 1878.

A final restoration was set on foot in 1864, and Sir Gilbert Scott reported that 15,000 was necessary to make good the dilapidation and decay which extended, in his opinion, from the foundations to the roof. The necessary amount was not forthcoming for several years. Then a new committee was appointed, with Sir Edmund Lechmere as its chairman. In 1875 the restoration began, the choir being undertaken first. For this purpose the church was divided into two parts by means of a h.o.a.rding. When the pavement in the choir was removed, the graves there were all carefully examined and their identification verified where possible. Many fragments of historic stonework were found, and these have been grouped together in the south-east chapel, which forms a kind of museum.

After the work in the choir was advanced enough, the nave was undertaken and thoroughly done; the floor was relaid on a foundation of cement, all open graves being filled up.

On September 23, 1879, the building was re-dedicated with a service modelled somewhat on the lines of the original dedication service in 1123.

During the last twenty years little has been done to the fabric.

Windows and other decoration have been lavished upon the interior, the money expended amounting to several thousands of pounds, a sum which might have been spent with more benefit to the fabric, upon purchasing the precincts, and on repairing the timber-work which supports the roof.

Interesting though the general question of the "restoration" of ancient buildings is, and interesting though Tewkesbury is as a particular case, this is not the place to go into it, but it may be well to quote from Mackail's "Life of William Morris," vol. i., p.

340, a letter which William Morris wrote to the _Athenaeum_ about the restorations proposed at Tewkesbury.

"My eye just now caught the word 'restoration' in the morning paper, and, on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Is it altogether too late to do something to save it--it and whatever else of beautiful and historical is still left us on the sites of the ancient buildings we were once so famous for? Would it not be of some use once for all, and with the least delay possible, to set on foot an a.s.sociation for the purpose of watching over and protecting these relics, which, scanty as they are now become, are still wonderful treasures, all the more priceless in this age of the world, when the newly-invented study of living history is the chief joy of so many of our lives? Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call 'restoration,' that it would be waste of words to enlarge here on the ruin that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left, I think I may write a word of encouragement, and say that you by no means stand alone in the matter, and that there are many thoughtful people who would be glad to sacrifice time, money, and comfort in defence of those ancient monuments; besides, though I admit that the architects are, with very few exceptions, hopeless, because interest, habit, and ignorance bind them, and that the clergy are hopeless, because their order, habit, and an ignorance yet grosser, bind them; still there must be many people whose ignorance is accidental rather than inveterate, whose good sense could surely be touched if it were clearly put to them that they were destroying what they, or, more surely still, their sons and sons' sons, would one day fervently long for, and which no wealth or energy could ever buy again for them.

"What I wish for, therefore, is that an a.s.sociation shall be set on foot to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all 'restoration' that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means, literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation's growth and hope."

The interest of the quotation lies in the fact that the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings was formed, with Morris as its first secretary--a very practical outcome to such a very forcibly expressed letter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHOIR BEFORE RESTORATION.

_From an old photograph._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NAVE BEFORE RESTORATION.

_From an old photograph._]

A chance presented itself in 1883 of re-purchasing the Abbey House, a building which stood in its own grounds on lands embracing the site of the whole of the original monastic buildings. Subscriptions poured in, and at the auction, held in the town, the Abbey House Estate was bought for 10,500, and became once more, after 344 years, the property of the church. This estate included the Abbey House, the Abbey Gateway, three cottages, and about nine acres of land. A portion of the latter, viz., that which comprised the Cloister Walk, was added to the churchyard. The Abbey House comprises portions of the infirmary and perhaps of the misericord, which survived destruction at the time of the suppression of the monastery. Part of the original wall remains on the north side, between the gateway and the church. It is a pity that the inscription under the bay window is illegible.

At the sale there was a curious lot (Lot 2) put up for sale, but it was withdrawn, and eventually given to the church. This lot was known as the _Vaulted Chamber_, and formed a portion of the south aisle of the nave which had been cut off from the rest of the building, and to which access was given by a stone staircase outside the church and a doorway in the wall by the nave.

Very few traces of the old monastic buildings are to be found, for when the neighbouring ground has been levelled at various times large quant.i.ties of stone have been dug up from the old foundations, and utilised partly in constructing boundary walls, partly in repairs to the building. The Abbey Gateway, which is well worth inspection, is Perpendicular work, and is in surprisingly good repair, mainly owing to the fact that for many years it was in private hands. It stands very solid and square, and looks formidable with its battlements, but the view through the open doorway is very fine--the foliage on the trees beyond showing up the stonework. The work in the arches is good, and the gargoyles are worthy of notice. The gateway was restored in 1849-50, and the gates are of about the same date.

In the cloister there are traces at the west of the outer parlour of the monks, and the size of the cloisters is clearly seen to have been eighty feet.

Of the place of this glorious Abbey in our own English history much might be written, and in fact it has been a difficult task to steer a course which, while avoiding too much history, should show that the history is there. In all the great events of history down to the end of the fifteenth century Tewkesbury Abbey has its place, and like the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster and the Cathedrals at Canterbury and at Winchester, is in every respect a representative structure. "It represents all the greatest influences in our social development, it directly embodies in its memories both the Crown, at the time when the Crown was a _primum mobile_ in politics, and all the estates of the realm. It shows the Church as the keystone in which the various thrusts of those contending ma.s.ses met and balanced each other. It exhibits in the Church patron the official link between things spiritual and temporal. Its great lay potentates, Saxon or Norman, either deduce their lineage from royal blood, or at once mix their own with it, and renew again and again their touch of royalty by fresh inter-marriages until the pedigree is absorbed into that of the reigning or rival sovereign. The House, after blazoning a leading name, often _the_ leading name of each successive period, after scoring repeated Plantagenet affinities, at length shares the internecine havoc of the York and Lancaster factions, and its last scions which survived that havoc are cut off on the scaffold for the crime of being too near the throne. But the almost princely rank of these founders, patrons, and benefactors is their least claim to historical remembrance. They are always to be found grouped in the very focus where the light of history falls strongest, men of the foremost mark for high trust and safe counsel for foreign strife, or civil broil" (_Hayman_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo. R.W. Dugdale._ THE ABBEY GATEWAY.]

Thus in the four centuries after the Conquest we find Fitz-Hamon, the second founder, connected by marriage with the great Norman soldier.

In the civil wars of Stephen, Robert Earl of Gloucester and Lord of Tewkesbury, and his half-sister, Maud or Matilda, played the parts we know so well. Again, Gilbert de Clare, who is buried in the Abbey, was one of the chief signatories of Magna Charta. The last of the three Gilberts de Clare fell at Bannockburn in 1314, at the age of twenty-three. The heiress of the latter married a Despenser, a family closely connected with Tewkesbury, two prominent members of which, viz., the favoured ministers of Edward II., will be remembered as by-words in history. Sir Guy de Brien, the valiant standard-bearer of Edward III., was the second husband of the widow of the fifth Lord Despenser, and, with her, helped to rebuild the choir, in the ambulatory of which his splendid monument is still to be seen. The Despensers in turn pa.s.sed away, the last heiress marrying in succession two cousins, each named Richard Beauchamp. Of her second marriage were born two children--a son, who married the sister of Warwick the king-maker, and a daughter, who became the wife of the Earl of Warwick himself. The king-maker's two daughters were unfortunate in their husbands, one of them having been married to the luckless Duke of Clarence, and the other to the young Prince Edward, who fell in 1471 at the battle of Tewkesbury. Of these n.o.ble patrons of the Abbey from the first Tewkesbury De Clare to the time of the ill-fated Duke of Clarence, all save two, _i.e._, the second Richard Beauchamp and the great king-maker, Richard Neville, who are both buried at Warwick, found their last resting-place in Tewkesbury.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TILE SHOWING THE ARMS OF FITZ-HAMON AND THE ABBEY IMPALED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo. D. Gwynne._ TEWKESBURY ABBEY, FROM THE NORTH.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The original stone is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

[2] Mr. Blunt, in his "Tewkesbury and its a.s.sociations," a.s.signs the northernmost chapel to St. James, and the one between it and the choir aisle to St. Nicholas, but in his plan he reverses them. The plan in the _Builder_ of December, 1894, follows Mr. Blunt's plan in so naming the two chapels. Some have thought the present Northern Chapel to be that dedicated to St. Eustachius.

CHAPTER II.

THE EXTERIOR.

One of the most characteristic views of the exterior is to be got from the iron gates which give admission to the churchyard. The view thus obtained presents to us, with the exception of the windows and the pinnacles on the tower, features almost entirely Norman.

As it is impossible to make a complete circuit of the church, it is as well to begin at the north transept. Here a wall will be found projecting from the north-east corner, of which the western face is in a very dilapidated condition. This wall contains a good Early English pointed arch, which is now filled up with stonework and contains a modern window. At the sides of the arch are Purbeck marble shafts with a central shaft of the same, which divides it into two subordinate arches, with an opening in the spandril between them. The base of the dividing shaft is a block of marble, curiously carved, representing four cats playing round the column. Each of the cats has in its mouth the tail of the cat immediately in front.

On each side are the remains of a smaller recessed arch, and the only portion of the north wall which is still standing contains one bay of a trefoil-headed arcading which formerly was carried round the walls of this chapel.

On the north wall of the transept the four bays of the vaulted roof are discernible, and a fine Early English doorway in the wall (lately restored) used to give admission to the main building. Originally, when the church was perfect, this was an open arch. At the last restoration a wall was built up inside, so that the arch might be left clear. This chapel can hardly have been the one mentioned on p. 13, which was dedicated to St. Eustachius, and was consecrated in 1246 by Prior Henry de Banbury. It is much more likely to have been the nave of the Early English Lady Chapel, of which the enclosed chapel to the east was the choir. Bristol Cathedral has its elder Lady Chapel in a similar position, though it was no doubt originally quite detached from the main building. The corner b.u.t.tress at the north-west angle of the north transept was erected about the year 1720, and there is a corresponding support to the south transept at its south-west angle.

The clerestory on this north side of the nave has a Norman arcade, supported on short shafts, which extends from the tower to the west front. The insertion of the later windows, which presumably were enlarged when the nave was vaulted, has destroyed the regularity of the arcading.

A flying b.u.t.tress of very slight proportions will be seen on the north side between the north transept and the north porch.

=North Porch.=--For a porch of Norman construction this is of unusual dimensions, measuring 24 feet by 20 feet and 39 feet high. It is extremely simple in character inside and out. The roof is a plain barrel vault of stone.

Both the internal and the external doorway have a circular arch composed of a series of mouldings supported by shafting, just as in the arch of the great west window.

Over the outside door of the porch stood an image of the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ, typical of the Incarnation, but it has suffered much at the hands of would-be zealots. Over the porch is a room or parvise, very difficult of access and badly lighted.

This north porch was in all probability built on to the church soon after the completion of the rest of the Norman building, and this may account for the difficult means of access.

Between the porch and the west end there are traces of some earlier building, ab.u.t.ting on to the north wall of the church.

The iron gates at the main entrance to the churchyard near the "Bell Hotel" were formerly mounted in the external doorway of the porch.

They were given to the church by Lord Gage in 1750.

=The Tower.=--This is generally considered to be one of the finest and most perfect Norman towers in existence. Its ma.s.sive size (each side measuring 46 feet) takes off from its actual height. It stands well, and is impressive from its proportions and the simplicity of its ornament. It is 132 feet high from the ground to the battlements inclusive, and 148 to the top of the pinnacles. The pinnacles and battlements were added in 1660, as the inscription on the north-west pinnacle testifies. They were restored in 1825.