Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory Part 3

The old wooden pulpit, whose place it has taken, has been removed to the church at Holt.

The earliest mention of an #Organ# is in 1405, but the earliest authentic record is of one set up by John Vaucks, Organ Master, in 1533. A memorandum in the churchwardens' accounts speak of him setting up a pair of organs on the rood loft. In the year 1643, we have records of the sale of organ-pipes and old tin. After the Restoration in 1664, we have a record of the purchase of a new organ for 180.

This was repaired, enlarged, and rebuilt at various times, and at the restoration, when the rood screen was unfortunately destroyed, the organ was placed in the south choir aisle.

All the lower windows are now filled with painted gla.s.s; all of which, with the exception of a few fragments, is nineteenth-century work.

DEANS OF WIMBORNE

Martin Pattislee or Pattishull appointed 1224 Ralph Brito " 1229 John Mansell " 1247 John de Kirkby " 1265 John de Berwick " 1286 Stephen de Mawley " 1312 Richard de Clare " 1312 Richard de Swinnerton " 1334 Richard de Merimouth " 1338 Richard de Kingston " 1342 Thomas de Clopton " 1349 Reginald de Bryan " 1349 Thomas de Bembre (founder of the chantry) " 1350 Henry de Buckingham " 1361 Richard de Beverley " 1367 John de Carp " 1398 Roger Tortington " 1408 Peter de Altebello " 1412 Walter Medford " 1416 Gilbert Kymer " 1427 Walter Herte " 1467 Hugh Oldham " 1485 Thomas Rowthel " 1508 Henry Hornby " 1509 Reginald Pole " 1517 Nicholas Wilson " 1537

COLLEGE DISSOLVED " 1547

CHAPTER IV

ST MARGARET'S HOSPITAL

About a quarter of a mile to the north-west of Wimborne stands the chapel of #St Margaret's Hospital#. The date of the foundation of this hospital is uncertain; tradition has it that it was founded by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., but this is without doubt wrong, as doc.u.ments--the character of which seem to indicate an early thirteenth-century date--have been found, from which it appears that this hospital existed at that time, and was set apart for the relief and support of poor persons afflicted with leprosy. This disease was at one time so common in England that a great number of lazar-houses were erected in the country, and many were well endowed; but when, after a time, the disease became less violent, many abuses crept in, persons not really suffering from the disease pretended to be lepers in order to get pecuniary benefits, and hence in many cases the leper hospitals were suppressed, or converted to other purposes. At the present day we find in many places, as here at Wimborne, that they are used as almshouses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST MARGARET'S HOSPITAL.]

This hospital, however, was not one of the well-endowed. It appears from a deed, dated in the sixteenth year of Henry VIII., that the hospital was chiefly maintained, not by endowments, but by the gifts of the charitable who were willing to contribute to its support; and to encourage the benevolent to give, the deed recites that "Pope Innocent IV, in the year 1245, by an indulgans or bulle did a.s.soyl them of all syns forgotten, and offences done against fader and moder, and all swerynges neglygently made. This indulgans, grantyd of Petyr and Powle, and of the said pope, was to hold good for 51 yeres and 260 days, provided they repeated a certain specified number of Paternosters and Ave Marias daily." The date of this indulgence proves the antiquity of the hospital, as it shows that it was in existence before the middle of the thirteenth century. A chantry was also founded in the chapel here by John Redcoddes of one priest to say ma.s.ses for his soul. To this chantry, according to a deed dated in the sixteenth year of Henry VI., many tenements in Wimborne belonged. In later times the Rev. William Stone, who has been mentioned before as the founder of the Minster Library, by his will left his lands and tenements in the parish of Wimborne Minster to be applied to the benefit of almsmen only who should live in St Margaret's Hospital.

There is a further endowment, but how it came to this hospital has not been discovered. The advowson and t.i.thes of the Rectory of Poole were, in the reign of James I., granted to the Mayor and Corporation of Poole for forty years, on the corporation undertaking to find a curate to discharge the duties lately discharged by the vicar, and to pay a rent to the crown of 12, 16s. per annum. In the reign of Charles I., the advowson and t.i.thes were granted to two men, Thomas Ashton and Henry Harryman, and their heirs for ever, on the same conditions; but they are now again held by the Corporation, who pay out of the revenues--to St Margaret's hospital 9, 16s.; to the churchwardens of Wimborne Minster, for the maintenance of the Etricke tomb, 1; and to the fellows of Queen's College, Oxford, to be spent in wine and tobacco on November 5th, yearly 2.

The Redcotte chantry possessed sundry vestments, the gift of Margaret Rempstone, in the thirty-fifth year of Henry VI., and plate, an inventory of which exists. This plate, on the dissolution of chantries, was given by the parishioners to the king, Edward VI. The hospital or almshouses stands on the high road from Wimborne to Blandford; the chapel joins one of the tenements occupied by the almsmen. These tenements are nine in number; three are inhabited by married couples, three by men, and three by women. Some of these cottages are of half timber, and thatched, others of modern brick. The chapel, at which there is now a service every Thursday afternoon, conducted by one of the minster clergy, is a plain building, which has been recently refitted, but remains, as far as windows and walls are concerned, in its original state. There are three doors in the north wall; the heads are pointed, and it is noteworthy that in the central door, that generally used for access to the chapel, the two sides of the arch are of different curvatures, so that the point of the arch is nearer to the right-hand side. The edge of the wall is chamfered round the doorways. The east window has a semicircular head, and plain wooden tracery dividing it into two lancet-headed lights with an opening above them. There is a window in both the south and north walls, near the east end, each of two lights; the south window is widely splayed inside; the head of each light has one cusp on each side. The head of each light of the north window has two cusps on each side. Farther to the west, on the south side, is a single narrow lancet, widely splayed, and still farther to the west is a semicircular opening with wooden tracery. The general character of the masonry would indicate that local workmen were employed in building this chapel, and that little was spent in ornamenting it at the time of the erection. There are, however, some traces of frescoes on the inside of the walls, both geometrical patterns and figures. The pointed doorways and the lancet window on the south side would indicate the thirteenth century as the date of the original building, and this agrees with the doc.u.mentary evidence mentioned above for the foundation of the hospital. The roof is an open one of ma.s.sive wooden rafters, with the beams running across at the level of the wall plates.

DIMENSIONS OF WIMBORNE MINSTER

Extreme length, exterior, E. to W. 198 feet Extreme width, exterior, N. to S. 102 "

Length of Nave, interior 67 "

Width of Nave, interior 23 "

Height of Walls 40 "

Length of Nave Aisles, interior 70 "

Width of Nave Aisles, interior 13 "

Length of North Transept, interior 42 "

Width of North Transept, interior 18 "

Height of Walls, interior 30 "

Length of South Transept, interior 33 "

Width of South Transept, interior 18 "

Height of Walls 30 "

Length of Choir, interior 32 "

Width of Choir, interior 21 "

Height of Choir Walls 28 "

Length of Presbytery 30 "

Width of Presbytery 21 "

Length of North Choir Aisle 53 "

Width of North Choir Aisle 21 "

Length of South Choir Aisle 53 "

Width of South Choir Aisle 20 "

Length of Side of Central Tower (square), interior 31 "

Height of Central Tower 84 "

Length of Side of Western Tower (square), exterior 31 "

Height of Western Tower 95 "

Length of North Porch, N. and S., interior 15 "

Width of North Porch, E. and W., interior 14 "

Length of South Porch, N. and E., interior 6 "

Width of South Porch, E. and W., interior 7 "

Length of Vestry, N. and S., interior 15 "

Width of Vestry, E. and W., interior 14 "

Length of Baptistery, E. to W., interior 18 "

Width of Baptistery, N. to S., interior 19 "

AREA 10,725 sq. feet.

CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, FROM THE BRIDGE.]

CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

On the promontory washed on the one side by the slow stream of the Dorset Stour, and on the other by the no less sluggish flow of the Wiltshire Avon, not far from the place where they mingle their waters before making their way amid mudflats and sandbanks into the English Channel, stands, and has stood for more than eight hundred years, the stately Priory Church which gives the name of Christchurch to a small town in the county of Hants. The ma.s.sive walls of its Norman nave, its fifteenth-century tower, and its great length--for, from the east wall of its Lady Chapel to the west wall of its tower, it measures no less than 311 feet--make it a conspicuous object from the Channel, especially after sundown, when its form, rising above the low sh.o.r.e of Christchurch Bay, is silhouetted against the sky. It is one of the finest churches below cathedral rank that is to be found in England. It is a perfect mine of wealth to the student of architecture, containing examples of every style from its early, possibly Saxon, crypt to the Renaissance of its chantries. Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in the nave, with its ma.s.sive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel.

The crypts beneath the north transept and the presbytery may have belonged to the original church, but of that which is visible above ground the oldest part was due to Flambard, of whom more hereafter.

When the first church was founded we cannot tell. Here, as in many other places, the origin is lost in the haze of antiquity and legend. Here, as at many other places, we find the original builders choosing one site, and the stones that they had laid during the day being removed by night by unseen, and therefore angelic, hands to another. It was on the heights of St Catharine, about a mile and a half away from the present site, that the human builders strove to raise their church. It may be that this hill, still marked by the ramparts of an ancient encampment, was not holy ground on account of its former occupation by heathens, though in after time, a chapel, built in the early part of the fourteenth century, existed there; but, anyhow, not on this hill, but on the flat lands of Saxon Tweoxneham, a name which pa.s.sed into the forms of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease.

A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut too short for the place it was to occupy, he lengthened it by drawing it out with his hand; and when the day for consecration came, and the other workmen gathered together to see their work hallowed by due ceremonial, this stranger workman was nowhere to be seen. The ecclesiastics came to the conclusion that this was none other than the carpenter's son of Nazareth, and the church which had in part been builded by the hands of the Christ Himself in later days became known as Christchurch.