In Domesday it is stated that the canons of the Church of the Holy Trinity hold lands in the village, and also in the Isle of Wight opposite. Certain it is that in the days of Eadward the Confessor there was a church at Twynham dedicated to the Holy Trinity, held by a collegiate society of secular canons. This church was swept away by Ranulf Flambard, the notorious justiciar and chaplain of William II., whose evil deeds, contrary to the oft-quoted passage from Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar, are now generally forgotten; while the good deeds that he wrought,—the nave of this church, and the still grander nave of Durham Cathedral Church, Durham Castle, "Norham's castled steep," and Kepier Hospital, built while he held the most important diocese in the North of England,—live after him, and have shed a glory on his name. Evil he was in moral character without doubt, but a glorious builder nevertheless. Though he oppressed the clergy, though it was through his instrumentality and by his advice that sees were kept vacant for years, and when filled, only given to those who were able and willing to pay large sums to the king, yet it is rather as a great architect than as an ecclesiastic that we, who gaze with delight and admiration on his work that has come down to us, will regard him. It is said that, as his end drew nigh, he realised the amount of evil he had done, and strove to make his peace with heaven and restitution to some, at least, of those whom he had wronged. He died in 1128, and his body rests in the great Cathedral Church of St Cuthbert that he had done so much to raise. But it was in the earlier part of his career, before he received the bishopric of Durham in 1099, that he probably began the work at Christchurch with which we are at present concerned.[4] He was succeeded there by Godric, who is called Senior and Patron and afterwards Dean; but Flambard seems still to have exercised some authority over him, illegal probably, but none the less real. We find him granting to Godric, for the work of building, all the offerings made by strangers and pilgrims, and when a canon died his share of the revenues of the college was devoted to the same object, the vacancy not being filled up by the appointment of any new canon.

[4] Sir Gilbert Scott, however, thought that the Norman nave of the Cathedral Church at Durham was commenced before Flambard became bishop, and that the new church at Christchurch was begun after that date, so that the work at Christchurch was copied by him from what he found already commenced at Durham when he went there.

The length of Godric's tenure of office is uncertain. On his death Henry I. appointed Gilbert de Dousgunels dean, having appropriated to himself the accumulated fabric fund. Henry I. granted the patronage of the church to Richard de Redvers, Earl of Devon, who appointed his chaplain, Peter, a Norman of Caen, dean. This dean seems to have diverted the funds from the work of completing the church, but his successor, Randulphus, carried on the work again, so that in his time the church and the conventual buildings were roofed in. In the time of Hilary, in the year 1150, the secular college of canons was converted into a Priory of Augustinian Canons. This change was made with the consent of Baldwin de Redvers, in accordance with the wishes of Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and at that time Bishop of Winchester, who is well known from the fact of his founding the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Hilary, two years before this change was made, had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester, and subsequently became one of the episcopal opponents of Thomas Becket. Henceforth, until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII., the head of the religious community at Christchurch was a prior, who was, according to a charter granted by Richard de Redvers in 1160, elected by the canons. There were, in all, twenty-six priors, and their names have come down to us, but with only the most meagre notices of the architectural work which was carried on by each of them. Extensive, however, it must have been; and from what we see of the church itself, it would seem as if building operations must have been almost constantly in progress.

In all probability there was, according to the usual plan of Norman churches, a tower at the junction of the nave and transepts, and beyond this an apsidal choir. But there is no documentary record of such a tower ever having been built or fallen, although its existence is rendered probable by a carving of a church with tower and spire on Draper's chantry, and by a similar representation on a seal, and in two other parts of the building. It is probable that the original choir extended westward beyond the transept, as at Westminster to the present day.

As has been stated above, the Norman church was commenced by Flambard towards the end of the eleventh century; and of the work so begun, the earliest existing remains are the arcading of the nave, the triforium, and the transepts with the eastern apsidal chapel attached to the south transept. Next to this in order came the walls of the aisles of the nave, and the cloisters and chapter-house, which, however, have disappeared; cloisters would come to be considered a necessity as soon as the secular canons were superseded by regulars. The early English clerestory of the nave seems to have been built in the time of the third prior, Peter, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. To the end of same century may be approximately assigned the vaulting of the nave aisles, the north porch, and a chapel attached to the north transept. Alterations of an extensive nature seem to have been begun in the fourteenth century; for to this date belong the rood screen, placed farther to the east than the old division between the ritual choir of the canons and the western part of the nave, which was probably given up to the lay dwellers in the parish,—and the splendid reredos. The Lady Chapel also was completed certainly before 1406, probably eleven years earlier. The fifteenth century saw the western tower built and the choir commenced and a great part of it finished, though the vaulting seems not to have been completed until the early part of the sixteenth century, as W. E. the initials of William Eyre, who was prior from 1502 to 1520, are to be seen on the bosses and the arch of the south choir aisle. Somewhat later still is the chantry at the east end of the south choir aisle, built by the last prior and dated 1529, and the chantry built by the last of the Plantagenets, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the Earl of Clarence and mother of Cardinal Pole, who at the age of seventy was executed by Henry VIII. in 1541.

Shortly before the dissolution in 1536 Prior Draper addressed a petition to Henry VIII. which is still in existence in the Record Office, praying that he would spare the Priory church, basing his request upon the desolate character of the district, the poverty of the house, and the fact that the church was not only a place for poor religious men, but also a parish church to the town and hamlets round about, whose inhabitants numbered from fifteen to sixteen hundred, that there was no place where any honest man on horseback or on foot might have succour or repose for the space of eight or nine miles, "but only this poor place of Christchurch, to which both rich and poor doth repair and repose." He goes on to say how it was of late years a place of secular canons, until the king's antecessors made it a place of canons regular, that "the poor, not only of the parish and town, but also of the country, were daily relieved and sustained with bread and ale, purposely baked and brewed for them weekly to no small quantities according to their foundation, and a house ordained purposely for them, and officers according duly given attendance to serve them to their great comfort and relief." But all the pleading was in vain. Commissioners were appointed, who presented their report to Lord Cromwell December 2, 1539. They say that "we found the Prior a very honest and conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king's majesty's use." Then follows a list of the treasures of the abbey, of the yearly value of the several endowments, and of the officers of the Priory, thirteen in number besides the Prior. Prior Draper retired on a pension, and the site of the domestic buildings was conveyed to Stephen and Margaret Kirton. The domestic buildings themselves gradually disappeared, but the whole of the church was handed over to the parish as a church, the grant to the churchwardens being made by letters patent 23 October 32 Henry VIII. It conveyed to them "the choir body, bell-tower with seven bells, stones, timber, lead of roofing and gutters of the church and the cemetery on the north side." Since then the church has been served by vicars, the patronage being in the hands of the dean and chapter of Winchester until the nineteenth century, when the advowson was purchased by Lord Malmesbury. The living is now in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester.

During the present century much restoration has been done. The nave was vaulted in stucco in 1819; the west window was taken in hand in 1828; the pinnacles of the tower and the upper part of the turret containing the stairs were renewed in 1871; and constant repairs have been going on up to the present time; and the principle that has guided the restorer has been, when any stonework has been removed to put in its place as exact a copy of the old as possible,—a principle that cannot be approved of, as it will lead, when the newness of the modern work has been toned down by time, to confusion between the genuine old work and the modern imitation of it. It is far better, when there is no question of stability but only of appearance, to leave the old stonework, even though much decayed, as it is, unscraped, untouched by the chisel, and where strength is needed to put in frankly nineteenth-century work, which could never by any possibility be mistaken for part of the original building.

One of the most glaring instances of injudicious restoration is to be met with in the apsidal chapel attached to the eastern side of the south transept. This work was carried out by the Hon. C. Harris, late Bishop of Gibraltar. The arcading is a nineteenth-century imitation of Norman work; the pavement is glaringly modern. Of what interest, it may well be asked, is such work? Who would care to visit Christchurch to see it? The nineteenth-century carver cannot possibly produce work similar to that of the carver who lived in the twelfth century,—the conditions of his life are altogether different, his training bears no resemblance to that of the old artist, his work is a forgery, and a most clumsy one too. In this chapel we see this reprehensible practice carried to its fullest extent, but there are many other parts of the building which have suffered. Most of the arcading on the exterior of the transept is modern imitation, and the tracery of the windows of the south choir aisle has been entirely renewed; no old stones, though many might have been used, have been reset in their original position. The arcading of the south aisle of the nave has been terribly tampered with. Possibly under the influence of time many of the shafts had partially crumbled, and the surface of the carved capitals had perished, so that the original design could not be made out; but that was no reason for cutting away the ornamental work to make way for modern decoration which may or may not bear some slight resemblance to what was there before. Some of the piers of the nave arcading have also been partially renewed. By an act of much-to-be-condemned vandalism the sub-arches of the two eastern bays of the south triforium of the nave were cut away to make room for faculty pews; recently a glaring white pillar has been introduced into the westernmost of these two bays, and two sub-arches built. If the same kind of work is carried out in the other, we shall see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady Chapel, and the re-pointing of the stonework. Old builders invariably covered their rubble walls with plaster, but the modern restorer for some reason seems to hate plaster and prefers, to show the coarse stonework which the builder never intended should be seen, and to emphasise the roughness by filling up the joints with conspicuous pointing. This, however, is not so destructive as much of the work which has been condemned above, because at any time the walls could be recovered with a thin coat of smooth plaster laid on with a trowel, but not "floated,"—that is, not brought to a smooth surface by a long straightedge.

A large and old building such as this Priory Church will need almost constant repairs to keep it sound and safe, and the income from visitors' fees is quite sufficient for this purpose. It is, however, much to be feared that restoration and reconstruction will form far too large a part of the work done in this building. Every new ornamental stone, to make room for which some original stone is displaced, detracts from the value of the building from an archaeological point of view; and though there may be some, or even many, who prefer the trim and smug appearance of modern work to that of the old, instinct with life, full of the thoughts of the builders and workers in wood and stone, whose bones have mouldered into dust in the garth of the vanished cloisters, and whose very names have in many cases been forgotten, yet we hope that those who have this priceless treasure in their keeping may recognise ere it is too late, that the result of a continuance of the process of restoration commenced about the middle of the nineteenth century will be the gradual conversion of a splendid memorial of bygone ages into a modern sham, and they themselves will be regarded, when true love of art becomes general, with the same indignation as that which they themselves feel with regard to those who pulled down the roof of the south transept and cut out the columns and sub-arches of the triforium in days before the Gothic revival set in. And the modern restorer has less excuse than the destroyer of a hundred years ago. If, like the vandals of the Georgian period, they had been blind to the beauties of architectural art, they would have had no sin, yet since they profess to see, therefore their sin will remain and their names will be held in perpetual reproach and everlasting contempt.

The foregoing historical sketch of the building has perforce been somewhat vague in dates, for, in the absence of documentary evidence, it is not easy to fix from architectural considerations alone the date of any particular piece of work within a limit of some twenty years or so. The out-of-the-way position of the Priory of Christchurch—for no great road ran through the town, and though it is near the sea there is no convenient harbour near it—has brought it to pass that it is scarcely mentioned in any mediaeval chronicles. Its own fabric rolls and annals have been lost. Here and there, however, the date of a will or the inscription on a monument has enabled a more definite date to be arrived at. The dates also of the dedications of some of the many altars are known—viz. that of the Holy Saviour, used by the canons as their high altar, and that of St Stephen, dedicated by the Bishop of Ross in 1199; that of the altar of the Holy Trinity, which stood in the nave, and was the high altar of the parish; and those of the altars of SS. Peter and Paul, SS. Augustine and Gregory and all the Prophets, dedicated by Walter, Bishop of Whitherne, on November 7, 1214; that of the altar of St John the Baptist and St Edmund, dedicated on December 7, 1214, by the same bishop; and that of the altar of SS. Michael and Martin, dedicated by the Bishop of the Isles in 1221.



CHAPTER II

THE EXTERIOR

The exterior of the church of Christchurch Priory may be well seen from several points of view. The churchyard lies to the north of the building, extending beyond it both to the east and west. On the south side, where all the domestic buildings of the Priory once stood, there is a modern house and private grounds. All that belongs to the church is a path running under the walls as far as the east corner of the transept, where a garden door stops farther progress. Several glimpses of the building, however, may be obtained on the way down to the Stour, and seen from the south side of this river, the church rises above its surroundings, and forms a conspicuous object. A good general view on the north-east may also be obtained from a bridge over the Avon. From this point of view the great length of the church is apparent; on the right-hand side may be seen the ruins of the Norman keep of the castle on its artificial mound, and nearer to the bridge the remains of a twelfth-century Norman house. From the churchyard, also, the whole north side of the church may be seen at once, and many striking features will be noticed. Among these, the circular staircase attached to the transept, with its rich diaper work; Norman arcading of interlacing arches running round the transept; the large windows of the choir clerestory, so wide and closely set together that the whole wall seems as though composed of glass—through which, and the windows of the opposite wall, the light of the sky can be seen; and lastly, the upper storey of the Lady Chapel with its row of windows of a domestic type.



A systematic examination of the exterior may best be begun with the Western Tower. This is of fifteenth-century date, and is set partially within the church—that is to say, its builder did not add it to the west of the church, making an archway through the previously existing west front, but pulled down the whole west wall of the nave, leaving, however, the west walls of the aisles, and carried the north and south walls of the new tower as far back into the church as the space occupied by the western bay, thus leaving two spaces at the west end of the aisles, one now used as a vestry, the other as a kind of lumber-room. In the west face of the tower is a doorway under a rectangular label; in the spandrels are two shields, bearing the arms of the Priory, and of the Montacutes and Monthermers, Earls of Salisbury. The doors are modern. Immediately above the doorway is a large window with three tiers, each containing six lights. The head of the window above these is of an ordinary Perpendicular character. The tracery was restored in 1828. Above this window is a niche containing a figure of Christ. The upper stage, which contains the bells, has two two-light windows in each face, each light being divided by a transom. These windows are not glazed, but are furnished with louvre-boards. The tower is crowned with a pierced battlemented parapet having pinnacles at the corners and at the middles of each side; within this rises a low pyramidal roof. The stair turret runs up at the north-east angle of the tower; this is octagonal, and is crowned with a parapet and crocketed pinnacles; the upper part of this turret and the pinnacles were renewed in 1871. The tower is strengthened by two buttresses at right angles to each other at each of the two western angles. On either side of the tower, as already explained, may be seen the west end of the nave aisles; these have windows with Perpendicular tracery, and on the north wall of the north aisle is a plain, round-headed doorway cut through the wall in modern time, with a Perpendicular window over it.



Next comes the North Porch, with a chamber above it—here, as in many other churches, the chief entrance into the building. Its great dimensions, both in length and height, however, are remarkable; it projects 40 feet beyond the aisle wall, and its own side walls rise nearly to the height of the clerestory of the church. Its south end does not extend beyond the wall of the aisle, so that there is a space between the upper part of the porch and the clerestory. The upper part above the porch proper contains, as mentioned above, a lofty chamber, probably originally the muniment-room. This is lighted by two pairs of narrow single-light windows on either side, and by a similar pair in the north face beneath the obtuse-angled gable. This room is, no doubt, a later addition. The entrance into the porch is a beautiful, deeply-recessed archway of thirteenth-century date, with numerous shafts of Purbeck marble on either side. Within the porch the side walls are divided into two compartments, each of which is composed of two pointed arches beneath another larger pointed arch, with a cinquefoil in the head. On the west side, near the outer archway, is a cinquefoiled recess, with shafts of Purbeck marble and foliated cusps. This is said originally to have contained a desk, at which the prior met the parishioners and signed deeds. A stone seat runs along each side of the porch walls. The double doorway which leads into the church is very beautiful and rich Early English work. From six Purbeck marble shafts on either side spring the orders of the enclosing archway; the heads of the double doorways themselves are cinquefoiled arches with foliated cusps. At the jambs, and dividing the two doors, are clusters of Purbeck marble shafts, with moulded capitals. In the tympanum is a quatrefoil, the upper part of which projects so as to form a canopy. This was, no doubt, intended to contain some carved subject, possibly the Doom. Very extensive restoration was carried out in the groining and porch generally, in 1862.



The wall of the North Aisle between the porch and the transept is divided into six compartments by Early English buttresses with gabled heads. This wall was built in Norman times, as may be seen from the small round-headed windows which light the clerestory, but was in Early English times faced with fresh ashlar, which conceals the Norman arcading of intersecting arches which ran along this wall. The triforium windows on this side are not, though they are on the south side, regularly arranged; there are none in the two western divisions, while between the easternmost buttress and the transept there are two. Six late thirteenth-century windows were cut through this wall—these are all of similar design; they consist of two lights under a comprising arch, with a circle in the head. The clerestory windows are of plainer character. Each window consists of two simple lancets set under a recessed arch without any hood moulding; the tympana also above the lancet heads are not pierced or decorated in any way; in fact, the whole clerestory is remarkably plain. Between the windows are flat buttresses. The aisles are covered with lean-to roofs of lead, the nave itself with a tiled roof of medium pitch. The gable at the east end of the nave, and indications on the east face of the tower, show that the pitch of the roof was once higher, and that it must have been lowered at some time after the tower was built in the fifteenth century.



The North Transept is most interesting. Its west wall contains two round-headed windows with billet moulding, the northern one blocked up; and at the north-west corner is a cluster of cylindrical shafts running up to about the same height as the walls of the aisle. Why they terminated here it is hard to say; they may mark the termination of the original Norman wall. This wall may not have risen above this height, or the upper part may have been taken down and rebuilt when the large Perpendicular window was inserted in the north end of the transept. At the north-east corner of the transept stands a richly-ornamented turret of Norman date. Round the lower part of this the arcade of intersecting arches which runs round the whole transept is carried; above this, round the turret, runs an arcading of semicircular-headed arches springing from pairs of shafts; above this the wall is decorated with diaper work; and finally, another arcading, this time of round-headed arches rising from single shafts, encircles the turret. The turret is capped by a sloping roof of stone attached to the transept wall. This turret is worthy of close attention, because it shows how the Norman builders hated monotony; each stage has its own decoration unlike that of any other; and, moreover, there are variations in the shafts of the arcading—some are plain, some decorated in one way, some in another. The same love of variety may be seen here that lends so great a charm on a larger scale to Flambard's glorious nave at Durham. No doubt this north transept had attached to its east wall an apsidal Norman chapel similar to that which still exists on the eastern side of the south transept, but this had to make way for an addition of two chapels, which we may assign, from the character of their architecture, to the latter end of the thirteenth century. The northern chapel is lighted by a three-light window with three foliated circles in the head, which is rather sharp pointed, and the southern one by a two-light window with one foliated arch. These are beautiful examples of plate tracery. Above these chapels is a small chamber lighted by a window of similar character. This is supposed to have been the tracing room, where the various architectural designs for the building were drawn.

To the east of the transept may be seen the Choir and Presbytery, with its four clerestory windows; the Choir Aisle, also with four windows; the Lady Chapel, with the octagonal turret-staircase leading into Saint Michael's Loft above it. It will be noticed that there is no window in the aisle under the western clerestory window of the choir, as the space where this would have been found is occupied by the two chapels to the east of the transept, and also that the aisle extends beyond the choir and flanks the western part of the Lady Chapel. The whole of this part of the church is of Perpendicular character. The windows of the choir aisles are low, the arches are depressed, and the curvature of each side of the arch is so slight that they appear almost straight lines. The body of these windows contains four lights; in the head, each of these is subdivided into two. Between the aisle windows are buttresses, which, with the exception of the one opposite the east wall of the choir, which terminates in a gable, have pinnacled cappings; and from each of these, save the gabled one, a flying buttress is carried over the roof of the aisle and rests against the choir wall. The aisle roof is flat, and at the top of the outer wall runs a plain parapet pierced with quatrefoil openings. The clerestory windows are of great size and are set close together. The choir roof is flat and is quite invisible from the exterior. There can be little doubt that a parapet at one time ran along the tops of the clerestory walls, but this has disappeared. The Lady Chapel has on either side three large Perpendicular windows; the arches of these as well as those of the clerestory have pointed heads. The western half of the central window of the Lady Chapel is blocked up by the later-built octagonal turret containing the staircase to Saint Michael's Loft. The staircase commences in an octagonal turret at the north-east corner of the choir aisle,—this rises above the aisle roof,—the stairs are then carried above the east wall of the choir aisle and then into the octagonal turret, which runs up the wall of the Lady Chapel and the loft above, and rises to some height above the parapet. There is a similar staircase on the south side, but the turret does not rise quite so high above the roof. There are five square-headed two-light windows on either side of St Michael's Loft, the lights being divided by transoms, the upper parts foliated. At the east end is a three-light window without any transom, with an obtuse arch under a dripstone. The loft has a parapet all round it pierced with quatrefoil openings. Some of this parapet, at any rate, is modern, as, in a photograph of the north side taken in 1884, the parapet is only shown to the east of the turret. As restoration work is constantly going on at the church, the money paid by visitors for viewing the interior (sixpence a head, which produces over L500 a year) being devoted to this object, the parapet will doubtless in course of time be extended along the walls of the choir, and will certainly add to the beauty of the church; and as nothing will be destroyed to make room for it, such an addition will not be open to the same objection as much of the work done by restoration committees.



The buttresses at the east angles of the Lady Chapel are set diagonally, and rise in five stages; the upper stage of each is square, in section, with the faces parallel to the walls of the church, and reaches a higher level than the parapet, and is finished with a flat cap. The large east window is a Perpendicular one of five lights. From the base of the south-east buttress runs a wall dividing the burying-ground from the gardens of the house, to the south of the church, which stands on the site of the domestic buildings of the priory. The portion of the wall of the Lady Chapel beneath the eastern-most window on the north side is modern. Here Mr Ferrey, the architect, by whom much of the restoration was carried out, discovered traces of an external chantry and the marks of an arcading corresponding to that still remaining on the inside.



The object of the chamber above the Lady Chapel is uncertain,—in 1617 it is described as "St Michael's Loft," in 1666 the parishioners described it as "heretofore a chapter-house," when petitioning the bishop to allow it to be used as a school. But if it was ever used as a chapter-house, it could only have been for a short time, as there is evidence that there was a chapter-house to the south side of the choir in the twelfth century, and that this remained as late as 1498. The south side of the Lady Chapel and choir correspond very closely with the north side, but there are several differences to be noticed between the south and north transepts. On the eastern side of the South Transept the Norman apsidal chapel still remains. This has a semi-conical roof with chevron table moulding under it, and two windows—one of original Norman work, the other a three-light Early English window. A sacristy of Early English date stands to the east of the apsidal chapel, and occupies the space between the apse and the south choir wall. At the south-east corner of the transept there is a circular stair turret corresponding to some extent with the turret at the north-east angle of the north transept; this, in the second stage, becomes octagonal in section, and rises above the parapet of the transept. In the south face is a depressed segmental window, much smaller than the corresponding window on the north side, under a gabled parapet. The pitch of the roof of the south transept is much higher than that of the north transept, and the upper part of the transept does not abut against the walls of the church. Two tiers of corbel brackets on the south wall, and traces of two Norman windows seem to indicate that here, as elsewhere, a slype, with a room above it, intervened between the south end of the transept and the chapter-house. This slype was generally a passage connecting the cloister garth with the smaller garth to the south of the choir which was often used as a burying-place for the abbots or priors, as the case may be, and was the place where the monks or canons interviewed visitors and chapmen. The room above was often used as the library. The south of the Nave is decidedly inferior in interest to the north. The cloisters have entirely disappeared, but a series of round-headed arches, formed of stucco, may conceal a stone arcading similar to that hidden by the Early English facing of the north wall. The small round-headed windows giving light to the triforium are more regularly arranged than on the north side; there is one, and only one, in each division between the buttresses. There were, as usual, two doors in this wall: one for the canons, in the wall opposite to the west of the cloister, one close to the transept for the prior; both are now blocked up. The prior's door, in the injunction of Langton, 1498, is directed to be kept locked, save when on festivals a procession passed through it. This doorway is of early thirteenth-century work; it is round-headed, and is French in character. There is a legend that a party of French monks, terrified by a dragon which rose out of the sea, possibly an ancestor of the sea-serpent of more modern days, put in to Christchurch haven, and were entertained by the canons, with whom they abode for many years; possibly this door may be of their workmanship or design. In the south wall a large aumbry or cupboard, in the thickness of the walls, may be seen; in this possibly the canons kept the books that they had brought from the library for study. What the windows in this aisle were we cannot say—originally, no doubt, Norman, for the westernmost window is still of this style; but the others, which were widened either in Early English or Decorated times, are now all filled with nineteenth-century tracery of Decorated type. The buttresses between the windows, unlike those on the north side, are flat Norman ones. Towards the west end of the aisle a passage has in modern times been cut through the wall, and when this was done remains of a staircase which, no doubt, led to the dormitory, were discovered. The clerestory, on this side, is of the same plain character as on the north side.

In a line with the south wall, but some little distance to the west, still stands a house which was once the porter's lodge, close to the site of the gatehouse. The porter's lodge was built by Prior Draper II. in the sixteenth century. The remains of the domestic buildings are very scanty—some old walls near the modern mill, occupying, no doubt, the site of the mill where the canons' corn was ground; some vestiges of the fish ponds; some few traces of walls and foundations, are all that have come down to modern days. From the similarity of arrangement in the buildings of religious houses, however, we can, with great certainty, assign the sites for the various parts—the dormitory over the cellarage, to the west of the cloister garth; the refectory to south of it; the calefactory, chapter-house, slype, to the east; and the prior's lodgings to the south of the choir, forming the lesser garth; the barns, bakery, and brew-house to the south-west of the church, near the porter's lodge and gatehouse. The prior had a country house at Heron Court, a grange at Somerford, and another at St Austin's, near Lymington. It must be understood that the choir was the church of the canons, and, as was common in churches served by Augustinian canons, the nave was used for the services which the laity of the district attended.

It is noteworthy that whether owing to the purity of the air, so different from that which exists in the large cities where so many of the cathedral churches stand, or from the goodness of the stone, most of the Priory Church is in most excellent preservation. Carving which, we are assured, has never been retouched with a chisel since it was first cut, remains as sharp and clearly cut as though it were the work of the nineteenth century; possibly some of its excellence is due to the preservative effect of the whitewash with which it was once covered, and which has been cleaned off with water and a stiff bristled brush.

The stone of which the north side of the nave is built came from Binstead; the limestone columns from Henden Hill; the Norman round turret and the choir is built of Portland stone; while Purbeck marble shafts are used in the north porch, and of the fine white stone from Caen in Normandy, the Salisbury and Draper chantries in the interior are constructed. These, though now about four hundred years old, are absolutely sharp in all the carving. There is a tombstone to the north of the porch which bears a curious inscription as follows:—"We were not slayne but raysd, raysd not to life but to be byried twice by men of strife. What rest could the living have when dead had none agree amongst you heere we ten are one. Hen. Rogers died Aprill 17 1641." This inscription has been variously explained. It is said by some that Cromwell, afterwards Protector, was at Christchurch, and dug up some lead coffins to make bullets for his soldiers, and flung the bodies out of ten such coffins into one grave; but this is manifestly incorrect. Oliver Cromwell was never at Christchurch, though Thomas Cromwell probably was, and here, as elsewhere, the two have been confounded. In many cases poor Oliver has had to bear the blame for destruction caused to churches by his less well-known namesake, the great destroyer of religious houses in the days of the eighth Henry. But neither of them had anything to do with this tomb, nor were the Parliamentary forces guilty of tampering with the coffins of the dead in the parish burying-ground at Christchurch. The very date precludes the idea, for the civil war did not begin till more than fifteen months after the date carved on this stone; and we may give the Roundheads credit for more sense than to be digging up coffins to make their bullets with, when there was abundance of lead to be had for the stripping on the roof of the Priory Church. A far more probable explanation is that which states that the ten bodies here interred were those of ten shipwrecked sailors, who were first buried on the cliffs near the spot where they were washed ashore; but the lord of the manor, when he heard thereof, waxed exceeding wroth, and a strife ensued between him and one Henry Rogers, Mayor of Christchurch, the former insisting on their removal to consecrated ground, the latter objecting to the removal, probably on the ground of expense; but in the end the lord of the manor had his way. But the mayor, to save the cost of ten separate graves, had them all buried in one, and placed this inscription over their remains as a protest against the conduct of the lord of the manor in moving their remains from their first resting-place.

The graveyard at the present time is neatly kept and well cared for. The headstones have not, as they have been in many other places, tampered with; and though many of the alterations made in the restoration will not gain the approval of archaeologists, yet some have been judiciously done, and some that are in contemplation will certainly have the result of rendering once more visible beautiful mediaeval work, long concealed by ugly modern additions.



CHAPTER III

THE INTERIOR

A rapid walk round the interior of the Priory Church shows that it practically consists of three main portions, almost entirely divided from each other—the Nave, the Choir, and the Lady Chapel. The solid rood screen, pierced by one narrow doorway, forms an effectual division between the nave and choir, while the stone reredos and the wall above it, running right up to the vaulting, entirely separates the latter from the Lady Chapel. In mediaeval times the choir was reserved for the use of the canons; the nave was the parish church with its own high altar; the rood loft was an excellent point of vantage from which a preacher could address a large congregation. In those times pews had not been introduced; open benches may have existed. At present the nave is occupied by pews; these with their cast-iron poppies were erected in 1840, and were then higher than at present. Still, even in their present form, they hide the bases of the pillars, and might with much advantage be swept away, and their places taken by open benches or movable chairs. The pews in the transepts are of older date; these, together with the galleries above them—that in the south transept supporting the organ—are a sad disfigurement to the church, and it is to be hoped that they will be soon removed; they hide some splendid Norman work. The case of the north gallery is worse than the south, as a staircase leading to it disfigures the beautiful Early English chapel attached to the east side of the transept. This gallery, however, contains some faculty pews. All the owners of these, save one, consented to its removal; but one stood out against it, and, having the legal right to prevent any alteration, has up to the present time kept the gallery intact. But as he has recently died there can be little doubt that no long time will now elapse before this disfigurement to the church will be a thing of the past. There seems little need for the gallery, as there is ample accommodation on the floor of the church for any congregation that is likely to assemble within the walls. Many alterations, some of which are certainly improvements, have already been made. In an engraving, dated 1834, the organ is represented standing on the rood screen, probably the best place for it; and the four eastern bays of the nave are seen to be partitioned off by a wooden screen with a rod for curtains. On a level with the capitals of the pillars, to the west of this partition, stands the font. At this time also the triforium was boarded off in order to shut out draughts and cold; but this boarding has happily been swept away, the partition across the nave has been removed, and an oaken screen with glazed panels runs across the church, cutting off the western bay from the remainder of the nave. The font, a modern one, now stands under the tower; a modern pulpit on the south side, under the crossing, where also desks for the clergy and choir have been placed. It is now the custom on Sunday mornings to read the whole of the service up to the end of the Nicene Creed, in the nave; after the sermon is over, the communicants alone enter the choir to receive the sacrament. The choir is also used for week-day services. The Lady Chapel is not used. The nave is Early Norman work, and was chiefly built during the reign of William II.; the clerestory, however, was added at the beginning of the thirteenth century by Peter, who was prior from 1195 to 1225. The original nave was probably covered by a flat wooden ceiling, the Early Norman builders rarely venturing to span any wide space by a stone vaulting. The present vaulting is of stucco, and was added by Garbett in 1819. The roof was altered in Perpendicular times more than once, as indications of a higher pitched roof than the present one exists on the east face of the fifteenth-century tower. As springing stones for a vaulted roof exist, it is probable that a stone roof was at one time contemplated; but possibly the idea was abandoned on account of the fear that the walls, unsupported by any exterior flying buttress to resist the thrust, would not have borne the weight. It will be remembered that such buttresses are to be met with along the walls of the choir, which is covered with a stone vaulting. The nave consists of seven bays. The pillars of this arcading, unlike those of Flambard's nave at Durham, are not cylindrical, but consist of half columns set against piers rectangular in section. The capitals are of the early cushion shape; some of them seem to have been subsequently carved with ornamentation which bears some resemblance to classical forms. The wall spaces above the semicircular arches, and below the chevron string-course which runs beneath the triforium, are decorated with hatchet-work carving, as will be seen from the illustrations. The triforium on either side consists, in each bay, of two coupled arches supported by a central pillar, enclosed by a comprising arch with bold mouldings and double columns, separated by square members. The most beautiful bay is the easternmost, on the north side, where the wall surface above the smaller arches, and beneath the enclosing arch, is carved with a kind of scale-work. Possibly the opposite bay, on the south side, was as richly ornamented, but the lower arches and the central column no longer exist, as they were cut away to make room for a faculty pew in 1820. These two bays were included within the original Norman choir. The central shaft, on the north side, is twisted. Two of the central shafts, on the south side, are richly ornamented—one with twisted decoration, the other with a projecting reticulated pattern. The shaft and sub-arches of the second bay from the east on this side is a modern renewal, as here also the old work was destroyed in 1820 to make room for a pew. The north triforium can be reached by a staircase continued up into the tower, entered from the western part of the aisle; access to the south triforium can only be gained by the use of a ladder. The north triforium deserves examination. It will be found that pointed arches have been added at the back, and buttresses have been built against the back of the wall behind the arches; the floor is rendered uneven by humps necessitated by the Early English vaulting of the aisle below—probably the aisles were originally covered with a barrel roof. At the east end of the north triforium an arch may be seen, which once opened out into the transept; this is now walled up, and traces of painting may still be seen on it. There is a passage under the clerestory, to which access may be obtained by a passage across the transept; this was, no doubt, made in order that the shutters of the windows might be opened or closed, according to the state of the weather. From the staircase which leads up to the north triforium a passage leads into the chamber over the north porch. This is a large room, about 40 feet in length from north to south, and is now used as a practising room for the choir; it is fitted with benches and a grand piano, and has a modern wooden gallery running along its south end.



The South Aisle is much more elaborately decorated than the north. Along the south wall runs a fine Norman arcade, the arches ornamented with billet and cable moulding. The window in the western bay is the original Norman one; the others were altered either in Early English or Decorated times, and are now filled with modern tracery in the Decorated style designed by Mr Ferrey. In the third bay is a holy water stoop, and in the fifth a large aumbry or recess, entered by a door; in this used to be kept the bier and lights used at funerals. Along the walls of each aisle runs a stone bench. There is no arcading on the wall of the north aisle. The vaulting of both aisles is Early English, dating from the time of Peter, the third prior, who, as previously stated, built the clerestory. The tracery of the north aisle windows is transitional in character between Early English and Decorated.



The Transepts are much encumbered by modern pews and galleries, and it is only by careful examination that much of the beautiful work that they contain can be seen. The arch opening from the south aisle into the transept is Early English, and the skilful junction of Early English and Norman work at this point is deserving of attention. This transept was at one time covered by a stone vaulting, which was destroyed at the latter end of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth. Some of the bosses taken from this may be seen, piled up with the old font and other fragments, at the west end of the north choir aisle. The west wall of the transept contains a Norman window. A doorway into the slype remains in the wall, and communicates with a wall passage. At the eastern side of the transept an arch opens out into an apsidal chapel, but pews block up the entrance. This chapel has been so completely restored that it has a thoroughly neat and modern appearance, and has lost all its archaeological value; round it runs a Norman arcade, and on the north side an aumbry may be seen. The north transept retains its Norman arcading, which, fortunately, has not been touched by the restorer's hand; how long it may escape is doubtful, as it is much mutilated. Still, as it is simply decorative, and not necessary for the stability of the wall, it would be well to leave it untouched, as genuine old work, even though it may have suffered at the hand of time or of former generations, is, from a decorative point of view, infinitely preferable to any modern reproduction. There are two small windows in the west wall to light the wall passage to the clerestory, which is reached by a gallery running across the base of the north window. In the north wall, behind the back of the pews, is a thirteenth-century recess. From this transept access is gained to the circular staircase leading downward to the crypt and upward to the small chamber above the eastern chapels. This is popularly known as Oliver Cromwell's harness room, and marks are shown on the wall supposed to have been holes for the insertion of pegs whereon he hung his harness; but as the Protector never came to Christchurch, all this is purely mythical. On one of the walls Mr Ferrey, the architect, found a design for a window; this he copied, and used when designing the tracery of the window he inserted over the prior's door at the east end of the south aisle of the nave. This tracing chamber is lighted by a two-light window with a quatrefoil in the head in the eastern wall. The two chapels below are beautiful examples of transition work from the Early English to the Decorated style; they were built by the De Redvers, Earls of Devon, the last of whom died in 1263. The eagles of the Montacute and Monthermer families appear in this chantry. There are two windows in the eastern wall. The larger, on the north, consists of three lights, with three circles in the head; the foliation of these outside the glass forms cinquefoil openings; the smaller window is of a similar character, but consists of two lights only, with a single foliated arch above them. An archway, widely splayed, on the western side, opens into the transept, and another archway opens into the choir aisle; this has a panelled pier, standing a little apart from the eastern side, designed to support the arch, which probably was found to be giving way. The shafts along the eastern wall, the capitals of one of which is carved with a number of heads said to represent the twelve apostles, should be noticed; the vaulting ribs are also interesting, especially the joggled ribs seen over the window. A stone altar stood in one of these chantries until 1780. These chapels are sadly disfigured by a mean staircase which leads into the transept gallery; it is devoutly to be hoped that before long this may be removed, and the exquisite beauty of the chapels seen without any inharmonious and irritating feature such as this staircase undoubtedly is. Below the transept is an Early Norman crypt; it is thought by some, from the rudeness of the work, that it may be of earlier date than the existing church, and that it belonged to the original church which Flambard destroyed to make room for his more splendid edifice. In it were discovered a number of human bones, which were reinterred in the churchyard. It has a plain barrel roof, divided by broad flat arches rising from pilasters.



It has often been debated whether or not the church ever possessed a central tower. There is no documentary evidence bearing on the question. It may be said that if a tower existed and fell, or was pulled down for any reason, some record would have remained; but the records connected with the building are fragmentary, and it by no means follows that the absence of record proves the non-existence of such a tower. In the case of Wimborne Minster the churchwarden's accounts contain no record of the building or of the fall of the spire, yet we know from outside testimony that such a spire did fall in 1600, and that a representation of it occurs on a seal. So here at Christchurch a seal is in existence on which the church is represented with a central tower of two storeys, the lower plain, the upper lighted by two round-headed windows and capped by a low pyramidal spire or roof with a tall cross on the summit. This is exactly what one would expect to find: a central tower is almost always found in Norman churches, especially collegiate churches; and the pyramidal roof was almost certainly the usual form in which these early towers were finished. The battlemented parapets which we so often meet with in Norman towers are in all cases more recent additions. Moreover, the massive arches and piers at the corners indicate that a tower was contemplated, even if it were never built. In the east gable of the nave as it at present exists, two round-headed windows may be seen. It is highly probable that this gable once formed part of the east wall of the tower, and when the tower was removed this wall was converted into a gable. Everything to the east of the crossing being of late fourteenth or early fifteenth century date, indicates that extensive alterations were made at that time; and if a tower and spire had previously existed, it must have been removed before this date. In the centre of the carving over the doorway leading into the Draper chantry, dated 1529, there is a representation of a church with a central tower and spire. Of course, no such steeple existed at the time this chantry was built, but it may have been a copy of some then existing representation of the building as it had appeared in former times. There are also two other carvings of angels carrying a model of a church with a central tower—one near the Salisbury chantry, one on the choir roof.



The nave is divided from the choir by a splendid rood screen 16 feet 6 inches high, 33 feet long, and 9 feet thick. The western face of this projects beyond the line joining the east walls of the two transepts; its eastern face rests against the eastern piers intended to support the central tower. It was extensively restored by Mr Ferrey in 1848, who considered that it may have been removed from some conventual church after the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII. and re-erected here. But there does not seem to be any real grounds for supposing that it was not expressly built for this church. Its character indicates a date somewhat late in the fourteenth century. In the centre is a narrow doorway and a passage into the choir; from the north side of this passage a flight of steps leads to the top of the loft. The base of the screen is plain; above this is a row of thirteen panelled quatrefoils on each side of the doorway—each containing a plain shield, over these a string course, then two rows of canopied niches, the upper row consisting of twelve, the lower, owing to the doorway occupying the central space, of only ten. The lower niches have pedestals, each formed of four short columns with detached bases but with large capitals, which meet one another above; these capitals are richly carved with foliage. No doubt, on the level space thus formed statues at one time stood. Woodwork screens with glazed doors and panels, made from an oak screen which formerly was placed across the south transept, run across the western ends of the choir aisles, so that when the doors of these and of the rood screen are locked, the eastern arm of the cross is entirely shut off from the rest of the church.



The Choir is entirely Perpendicular in character, and it seems to have been begun in the time of Henry VI. but not to have been completed until the time of Henry VII., and some of the carving of the stalls is of still later date. Leland says of it, "Baldwin, Earl of Devon, was the first founder, and his successors to the time of Isabella de Fortibus,[5] and at present the Earls of Salisbury are regarded as founders." Four large clerestory windows on either side light the choir. The wall beneath these is continued downwards to the floor, but under each window a low obtusely-pointed depressed archway is cut leading into the aisles. Between the bottom of each clerestory window and the heads of these arches the wall is panelled as with window mullions and tracery, so that the appearance from the inner side may be best understood by imagining that each window extended from floor to roof, but that the upper part alone is glazed, the lower cut away for the arch leading into the aisle, and the lower lights beneath the transom blocked up with masonry. These lower arches are more or less blocked up. The Salisbury chapel blocks up the north-eastern one completely; the sedilia, no doubt, occupied the opposite one, where now a modern altar tomb may be seen. The next on each side to the west is open, and flights of steps under them lead down to the aisles; the woodwork at the back of the choir stalls close the remaining two on the inside, and on the outside chantry chapels, opening one into the north one into the south aisle, stand under the second arch on each side counting from the rood screen. The upper stalls number in all thirty-six, fifteen on either side, and six with their backs to the rood screen. There is, also, a lower range of stalls on the north and south. The prior's and sub-prior's stalls on either side the doorway in the screen looking east are canopied, as also is the precentor's at the east end of the south side. The arms of the stalls are quaintly carved with various grotesque figures, as are also the misereres; the upper parts of the panels behind the upper stalls are also carved in low relief; above these is a projecting cornice decorated with pinnacles. The stalls are late Perpendicular work, the wainscoting behind the stalls being later still, as we can see from the subjects carved on the upper part of each panel. Some of the misereres are, however, very old—one dates back to about 1200, another to 1300, others are of later date, and most of them belong to the same period as the stalls. The older ones were found lying about in the lumber of the church, and have been placed in recent years in some of the stalls the seats of which had been lost or stolen. The older seats may have belonged to the original Norman choir. As the term "miserere" may not be understood by all our readers, it may be well to quote from Parker's "Glossary of Architecture" the following description:—"Miserere, Misericorde, Patience, or Pretella, is the projecting bracket on the under-side of the seats of stalls in churches: these, where perfect, are fixed with hinges so that they may be turned up, and when this is done the projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a seat, to afford very considerable rest to any one leaning upon it. They were allowed as a relief to the infirm during the long services that were required to be performed by ecclesiastics in a standing posture. They are always more or less ornamented with carvings of leaves, small figures, animals, etc., which are generally very boldly cut. Examples are to be found in almost all ancient churches which retain any of the ancient stalls—one of the oldest remaining specimens is in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; it is in the style of the thirteenth century." When Parker wrote the last sentence the still older miserere now to be seen at Christchurch had not been discovered.

[5] She lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century.



It is curious to notice the absence of reverence on the part of the mediaeval canons, according to our modern notions, that these quaint carvings indicate. One might have expected that inside the church the subjects would have always been of a sacred nature, rude perhaps, and grotesque from their rudeness. Such carvings are found in many places, but here at Christchurch we have satirical subjects, caricatures of contemporaries, some indeed of so objectionable a character that they have been removed of late years. A few examples of these carvings will be given. On the arm of one of the stalls a fox is represented preaching to a flock of geese, a cock acting as clerk. On one of the misereres we have a pair of devils somewhat resembling monkeys tempting an angel, a goose bringing an offering on a plate to a quaint figure, a man with a hatchet employed in carving, a man with a hole in the back of his garments fastened with a pin, besides various animals, fishes, mermaids, and monsters. On the wainscoting we have the heads of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Catharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Campeggio, the King of Scots, and the Duchess of Burgundy, who assisted Perkin Warbeck in his attempt to gain the crown of England, and two canons disputing over a cup, which is placed between their faces. This last carving probably has some reference to the granting of the cup to the laity in time of Henry VIII.



The vaulting of the choir is of a somewhat unusual character: the pendants are especially worthy of notice. It is difficult to describe the manner in which they are placed, but the illustration shows their character and position. The short connecting ribs of the vaulting form a stellated cross over the presbytery. Some colour may still be seen on the carved work of this portion of the church, and the initials of William Eyre, prior 1502-1520, appear on the bosses.



The east wall of the presbytery contains no window, but is occupied by a beautiful stone reredos carved with a representation of the tree of Jesse. It is divided into three tiers with five compartments in each, the central one wider than the two on either side; the space above it and beneath the vaulting is occupied by a wall, in which a doorway now blocked up may be seen. The outer compartments of the lowest tier contain doors leading to a platform behind the reredos; between them stands an oak altar, the gift of A. N. Welby Pugin in 1831. Above the altar in the central compartment Jesse lies asleep, on the left hand David plays upon his harp, on the right sits Solomon deeply meditating. Above Jesse we have in one carving an amalgamated representation of the birth of Christ and the visit of the Wise Men. On the left hand sits the Virgin Mary with her Child, fully clothed in a long garment, not wrapped in swaddling clothes, standing in her lap; behind her stands a man, probably Joseph; and before her kneels one of the Wise Men offering his gift of gold in the form of a plain tankard; on the right behind him stand his two fellows, one carrying a pot of myrrh, the other a boat-shaped vessel, probably intended for a censer containing frankincense. On a bracket above the head of the kneeling Wise Man, the shepherds kneel in adoration; nor are the flocks that they were tending forgotten, for several sheep may be seen on a hill-top above their heads. Thirty-two small figures may be counted in niches in the buttresses dividing the compartments; crockets, finials, and pinnacles decorate the various canopies over the carvings. This reredos is apparently of late Decorated date, and therefore earlier than the fifteenth-century choir. Possibly it was an addition to the Norman choir before this was removed to make room for the existing one. Mr Ferrey was of opinion that it may have once stood across the nave between the second piers from the east, thus forming a reredos for the western part of the nave, which was used as the church of the parish. Below the presbytery is a Norman crypt, now converted into a vault for the Malmesbury family. It has already been mentioned that there are doors on either side of the altar, leading to a kind of gallery or platform behind the reredos; these were designed to allow certain ceremonial compassings of the altar, and it is possible that steps led down from the platform to the ambulatory. On the east side of these doorways there are corbel heads under the arches, and the walls of the platform are panelled. Within the altar rails is a slab bearing the name of Baldwin IV., the seventh Earl of Devon. On the south side is the monument of Lady Fitzharris, who died in 1815; it is a statue by Flaxman representing the Lady teaching her two sons from the Bible. Farther to the east is the altar tomb of the Countess of Malmesbury, who died in 1877, occupying the place of the sedilia; and on the north the exquisite chantry of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last bearer of the royal name of Plantagenet, whose tragic fate and horrible execution is one of the foulest stains on the memory of Henry VIII. She was the daughter of "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence" and of the kingmaker's eldest daughter Isabella, and was mother of the celebrated Reginald Pole who, being ordained deacon at the age of sixteen, was appointed Dean of Wimborne a year later, and rose in time to the high rank of Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, and played an important part in history in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary. She erected this lovely chantry as her last resting-place, wishing to lie after her troublous life in this quiet spot, but it was not so to be. Her son, by the publication on the Continent of a violent attack on Henry VIII., incensed the king to such an extent that he laid his hands on all the kindred of the Poles he could find in England; some were tried and executed, others attainted without trial, among them the Countess of Salisbury, who was at the time over seventy years of age. She refused to lay her head upon the block, and the headsman hacked at her neck as she stood erect; her body was not allowed to be buried in the chantry which she had erected for herself,—so far did the spite of Henry go,—but she lies among the ambitious and unfortunate, the aspiring, and unsuccessful of many a sect and party in the cemetery of St Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Hers was an ill-starred race. Her grandfather was slain at Barnet, 1471; her father murdered by his brother Edward IV., 1478; her own brother, the Earl of Warwick, imprisoned by Henry VII., and subsequently beheaded on Tower Hill, 1499; her eldest son, Lord Montagu, was executed for high treason; and Margaret herself met a like fate on May 27, 1541.



Her chantry is built of Caen stone, and the decoration is of Renaissance character. It is conjectured to be the work of the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who died in the prison of the Inquisition in Spain in 1522. He was engaged on Henry VII.'s tomb in Westminster, and other works ordered by Henry VIII. at Westminster and Windsor, from 1509 till 1517; and if this chantry at Christchurch is his design the date must lie between these two years. Two four-light windows with battlemented transoms look out on either side; to the west of these two doorways lead, one to the presbytery the other to the north aisle; on the east wall are three canopied niches, beneath which an altar stood or was intended to stand; the ceiling is richly carved with fan traceries and bosses; the latter have been mutilated—by order, it is said, of Henry VIII. A letter from the King's Commissioner thus describes the work done:—"In thys churche we founde a chaple and a monumet curiosly made of cane stone p^rpared by the late mother of Raynolde Pole for herre buriall, which we have causyd to be defaced and all the Armis and Badgis to be delete." On the north side are twelve tabernacles. This chapel stands on a richly carved panelled basement, and all the walls are covered with minute carving; but here, as elsewhere, in late work we find the same forms repeated again and again, and we miss that wealth of fancy which gives each boss or capital carved by the earlier workers such a life and individuality. The side of this chapel that faces the north aisle is more elaborate than that facing the choir, and is necessarily more lofty, as its base rests on the floor of the aisle, which is lower than the floor of the presbytery. On the west face is one of several memorial tablets to members of the Rose family, who are buried in this aisle.

In the north choir aisle, at the western end, may be seen a kind of small museum of fragments from various parts of the church, collected at the time of the restoration, among them some bosses from the vaulting of the south transept, destroyed about a hundred years ago, and fragments of a Norman font. The vaulting of this and the corresponding aisle on the south side is of the same character as that of the choir, but is somewhat plainer, and is not decorated with crosses or pendants. On the south side of this aisle is a late Perpendicular chantry, built in accordance with the will of Sir William Berkeley, dated 1486, to commemorate himself and his wife. Part of the inscription ... ARMIGERI MARGARETE QUE CONSOR ... can still be read on the frieze; on its flat ceiling are painted two large roses, one white, one red; it contains two brackets for cruets; over the entrance to it is placed an oval memorial tablet to one John Cook, who died in 1787. Eastward of this is the Salisbury chapel already described. On the north wall of the aisle is a monument, consisting of an altar-tomb with a front of carved quatrefoils and a purbeck slab, dating about 1550. The canopy over it is later, and the coat of arms beneath it is that of Robert White of Hadlow, Kent, who is commemorated on a board at the west end of the church as a benefactor who left L100 in land for the poor in 1619, thus fixing the date of this portion of the tomb. The scroll beneath the arms has the initials R. W., and the motto "Suffer in Tym." A chantry is formed at the eastern end of the aisle by the western end of the north wall of the Lady Chapel. It contains an altar tomb with the recumbent figures of Sir John Chidioke, a Dorset knight, slain in 1449 in the Wars of the Roses, and his wife. This monument has occupied its present position only from 1791,—it previously stood in the north transept.



The east end of the south choir aisle is occupied by the chantry chapel of John Draper II., the last of the priors and titular bishop of Neapolis in Palestine, near the ancient Shechem in Samaria; it is dated 1529, and is formed by a screen of Caen stone stretching across the aisle. There is a central doorway with a depressed arch at the top, and canopied niches over it, and on either side are two transomed four-light unglazed windows under arches of the same character as that over the doorway; along the top of the screen runs a battlemented parapet. Within the chantry, on the south wall, is a very beautiful piscina, the finest in the church. Just outside the screen is a square-headed doorway. Along the south wall of this aisle, as along the north wall of the corresponding north aisle, a stone bench-table runs. On the north side the panelled wall on which the Countess of Malmesbury's altar tomb stands is decorated with carvings of angels; the largest of these holds a shield with a death's-head. Farther to the west, beyond the steps leading down from the choir, is a Perpendicular chantry, known as the Harys chantry; it has open tracery above cusped panels, canopied niches, and a panelled bench table. Robert Harys was rector of Shrowston, and died in 1525; his rebus, a hare under the letter R, may be seen on the panels. On the opposite side of the aisle is the doorway leading into what is known as the sacristy. This is a thirteenth-century addition to the church, and is of irregular shape, as it is wedged in, as it were, between the apsidal chapel on the east side of the transept and the south wall of the choir aisle. In the south wall are triple sedilia with Purbeck shafts and foliated heads; in the north wall is a square opening or squint.



Behind the reredos is an ambulatory or processional path; from this may be seen, over the archway leading into the south aisle, the end of the "miraculous beam," lengthened, according to the legend, by Christ, when He appeared as a workman and took part in the building of the original church. How this came to be preserved, and how it came to occupy a position amidst the latest work in the church, is not recorded. The Lady Chapel is very beautiful Perpendicular work; it had its own altar and reredos under the east window. The reredos is much mutilated, but besides the part that is still attached to the wall, there are many loose fragments now set up on the altar. This is a slab of Purbeck stone, 11 ft. in length and 3 ft. 10 ins in breadth. On the north and south sides of the altar are the tombs of Thomas, Lord West, and Lady Alice West, his mother. These tombs are of Purbeck marble and of a form by no means uncommon in the churches of Wessex. The ten shafts supporting the canopy of the tomb on the north still remain; from the other tomb such shafts as it had have disappeared. Thomas, Lord West, died in 1406, his mother in 1395: these dates fix within reasonable limits the date of the building of the Lady Chapel. Thomas West, in his will, directs that his body should be buried in the "New Chapel of Our Lady in the Mynster of Christchurch." It is noteworthy to remark that the original arcading is cut away to make room for this monument, so that the chapel had been finished before he died. Both Sir Thomas West and his mother were benefactors to the church. Besides other bequests of money towards the building fund and for perpetual masses, each of them gave about L18 for the singing of 4500 masses within six months of the day of their deaths. On the south side of the chapel is the original doorway leading into the canons' burial-ground; a corresponding door is to be seen on the north side. The splays of the arches of the windows are elaborately ornamented with panelling. The arcading under the window, a series of ogee arches, is worthy of notice. The tattered colours of the "Loyal Christchurch Volunteers," one of the earliest regiments of volunteers, which was enrolled in 1793, hang at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. The vaulting is of the same character as that of the choir, with curious pendants in the form of church lanterns.



St Michael's Loft is reached by long flights of steps running up the turrets described in the last chapter. It is a plain, low room with a low-pitched tie-beam roof of oak. It was once a chapel, as the piscina in the east wall clearly shows. The site of the altar is now occupied by a disused desk of the character familiar to us in our own school days some half-a-century ago; it is a sort of pew with doors, within which the master sat enthroned and ramparted. This room was used as a public grammar school from 1662 till 1828, and subsequently as a private school, which was finally closed in 1869. The boys went to this school and returned from it by the staircase on the north side which has an entrance from the churchyard; the stairs on the south side were used when anyone had occasion to go into the church or to go from it to the room above.

An upper chamber or chapel is an uncommon feature in England. Remains of staircases give rise to the conjecture that there was a similar chapel over the Lady Chapel at Chester, and somewhat similar erections are to be met with on the Continent; but Christchurch Priory is unique in possessing such a perfect specimen. The dedication of the upper storey to St Michael, the conductor of souls to Paradise, is appropriate. Churches built in elevated positions were frequently dedicated to him, and few if any mediaeval churches dedicated to this archangel are to be met with on low-lying ground.

Under the western tower stands a modern font. The fragments of a Norman font, with carvings representing various incidents in the life of Christ, may be seen, preserved in the north choir aisle. The fifteenth-century successor has been removed to Bransgore Church, four miles off.

Against the north wall of the tower stands the monument of the poet Shelley, the work of the sculptor Weekes. Needless to say, it is but a cenotaph. The "heart of hearts," "Cor Cordium," and the ashes of the poet cremated on the Tuscan shore, lie far away, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius, in the grave where the loving hands of Trelawney laid them in 1823. Here we have an ideal representation of the finding of the drowned body—not a pleasing one, but less ghastly than the reality; and below the inscription which tells his name and the number of his years and the manner of his death, the following stanza from his own "Adonais" may be read:—

"He hath out-soared the shadow of our night: Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain, Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn."

The choice of Christchurch Priory as the site for this monument was due to the fact that the poet's son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who erected it, lived at Boscombe Manor, between Christchurch and Bournemouth.

The tower contains a peal of eight bells. These are all old; the fifth and sixth bells have fourteenth-century inscriptions round their crowns, the others appear to have been cast early in the fifteenth century.



CHAPTER IV

DEANS OF THE SECULAR COLLEGE

1. Ralf Flambard, afterwards Bishop of Durham. 2. Godric. 3. Gilbert de Dousgunels. 4. Peter de Oglander. 5. Randulphus. 6. Hilary, afterwards Bishop of Chichester.

PRIORS OF THE AUGUSTINIAN COLLEGE

1. Reginald, 1150. 2. Ralph. 3. Peter, 1195. He built the clerestory and carried out other Early English work. 4. Roger, 1225. 5. Richard. 6. Nicholas de Wareham. 7. Nicholas de Sturminster. 8. John de Abingdon, 1272. 9. William de Netheravon, 1278. 10. Richard Maury, 1286. 11. William Quenton, 1302. 12. Walter Tholveshide, 1317. 13. Edmund de Ramsbury, 1323. During his time Bishop Stratford's Injunctions were issued, 1325. See page 129. 14. Richard de Queteshorne, 1337. 15. Robert de Leyghe, 1340. 16. William Tyrewache, 1345. 17. Henry Eyre, 1357. He became blind in 1367 and was allowed a coadjutor. 18. John Wodenham, 1376. 19. John Borard, 1398. During his time Archbishop Arundel issued Injunctions, 1404. See page 130. 20. Thomas Talbot, 1413. 21. John Wimborne, 1420. 22. William Norton. 23. John Dorchester. 24. John Draper I., 1477. Bishop Langton's Injunctions were issued during his tenure of the priory. 25. William Eyre, 1502. During his time the choir was completed. 26. John Draper II. He surrendered the priory to Henry VIII.'s commissioners, 1539, and was allowed to retain Somerford Grange for life, and received a pension of L133, 6s. 8d. He died in 1552, and was buried in the nave near the entrance to the choir.

VICARS OF CHRISTCHURCH

By the council of Arles 1261, religious orders that held parish churches were bound to supply vicars to officiate. These were appointed by the canons, and were taken from their own body.

The names of many of these are known. The 13th was Robert Harys, whose chantry stands in the south choir aisle; he died in 1325. In the time of the 15th, William Trapnell, the church was granted by Henry VIII. to the parishioners, 32nd year of Henry VIII. In the time of the 17th, Robert Newman, an inventory of the property was made by order of Edward VI.'s commissioner. John Imber, the 21st vicar, was expelled by the Parliament from 1647-1660, but was restored to his preferment in the same year as Charles II. gained the throne. The present vicar is the 32nd.

STRATFORD'S INJUNCTIONS, 1325

1. Every canon save the seneschal and cellarer must attend Matins, High Mass, and the Hours. The seneschal, if present in the priory for two nights together, must attend one Matins, and the cellarer must be present at service on alternate nights at least.

2. Six canons must be enrolled for celebrating Our Lady's Mass; the prior must celebrate on all great feasts at High Mass, and on Saturdays at Our Lady's Mass, and must wear a surplice not a rochet.

3. Canons in priests' orders must celebrate daily, those who are not must repeat eleven Psalms with a Litany or Psalter of Our Lady every day.

4. Four confessors must be appointed to hear the confessions of the canons.

5. Latin or French must be the languages spoken.

6. No one save the prior or officers, without special leave, must ride or leave the Priory.

7. Two-thirds of the canons must dine daily in the refectory; the door must be kept by a secular watchman whose duty it is to remove servants and idle people from the door during dinner; the almoner must prevent any canon carrying his commons to the laundry-people or people of the town.

8. All the canons must sleep in the dormitory, each in his own bed.

9. The infirmary must be visited daily by the prior or sub-prior.

10. Two canons must act as treasurers, and a yearly account must be presented.

11. The common seal must be kept under four locks, and documents sealed in full chapter, not as heretofore during Mass.

12. Canons must not play at chess or draughts, nor keep hounds or arms (save in the custody of the prior), nor have a servant (save when on a journey), nor write nor receive letters without leave. The prior may keep hounds outside the priory buildings.

ARCHBISHOP ARUNDEL'S INJUNCTIONS, 1404

No. 1. Ordered the destruction of an old hall and an adjoining chamber known as the sub-prior's hall after the departure of Sir Thomas West its then occupier, as noblemen were in the habit of occupying it to the great disturbance of the order and the keeping open of gates which ought to be closed.

No. 2. Enjoined the building of a house for the proecentor, and a new chamber for the sick.

No. 3. Ordered the setting apart of a chamber for recreation apart from the infirmary (it may be supposed that the canons during recreation hours were noisy, thereby disturbing the sick).

No. 4. Directed the provision of separate studies for the canons. It would appear that nobles, such as the Montacutes and Wests, put the priory to such great expense by taking up their abode, together with their retainers, in the domestic part of the buildings.

THE NORMAN CASTLE

Very little of the castle erected by Richard de Redvers, who died in 1137, remains; but on an artificial mound at no great distance to the north of the Priory Church stand fragments of the east and west walls of the square Norman keep, about 20 feet high and 10 feet thick. The castle belonged to the De Redvers, Earls of Devon, till they were alienated to the crown in the 9th year of Edward I. (1280), the last earl having died in 1263, though the last female descendant lived till 1293. In 1331, Edward III. granted the castle and land to William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; after the execution of John de Montacute in 1400 for the part he took in the plots against the new king, Henry IV., Sir Thomas West, who lies buried in the Lady Chapel, was appointed constable. He died in 1405, then Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, held the castle till 1428. After this it was held by various persons, and we find a constable of the Lordship of Christchurch as late as 1656. The manor held by the De Redvers, and then by the Montacutes, passed through various hands. Among the holders we may notice the Nevilles, hence the connection with the Priory of the ill-fated Margaret, the kingmaker's granddaughter, who was Countess of Salisbury in her own right, the Earl of Clarendon, Sir George Rose, and the present owner, the Earl of Malmesbury, who obtained it in 1862.

In early days the bailiff of the de Redvers regulated all markets, fairs, tolls, and fines, and had the right of preemption and sat as judge in the tenants' court. Edward I. relieved the burgesses of Christchurch from all arbitrary exactions, and established a fixed fee-farm rent instead. The castle was taken for the Parliament by Sir William Waller with 300 men on April 7, 1644.

A little to the north-east of the castle stand the remains of one of the few Norman houses that have come down to the present time. It is thus described in the first volume of "The Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages" by Turner and Parker, pp. 38, 39. This volume was published in 1851. "At Christchurch, in Hampshire, is the ruin of a Norman house, rather late in the style, with good windows of two lights and a round chimney shaft.[6] The plan, as before, is a simple oblong; the principal room appears to have been on the first floor. It is situated on the bank of the river near to the church, and still more close to the mound, which is said to have been the keep of the castle; being between that and the river, it could not well have been placed in a situation of greater security. Whether it formed part of another series of buildings or not, it was a perfect house in itself, and its character is strictly domestic. It is about seventy feet long, and twenty-four broad, its walls, like those of the keep, being exceedingly thick. On the ground floor are a number of loop-holes: the ascent to the upper storey was by a stone staircase, part of which remains; the ground floor was divided by a wall, but the upper storey seems to have been a long room, lighted by three double windows on each side; near the centre of the east wall, next the river, is a large fireplace, to which the round chimney before mentioned belongs. At the north end, there appears to have been a large and handsome window of which part of the arch and shafts remain, and there is a small circular window in the south gable. From what remains of the ornamental part of this building, it appears to have been elegantly finished and cased with squared stones, most of which are, however, now taken away. There is a small projecting tower, calculated for a flank, under which the water runs; it has loopholes both on the north and east fronts, these walls are extremely thick. By the ruins of several walls, there were some ancient buildings at right angles to this hall, stretching away towards the keep. This was probably part of the residence of Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, to whom the manor of Christchurch belonged about the middle of the twelfth century."[7]

[6] Since rebuilt.

[7] Grove's "Antiquities," vol. ii. p. 178.



This building is much overgrown with ivy, which by a comparison of the illustration given in the work just quoted with its present condition, as represented in the photograph here reproduced, has increased considerably during the last fifty years. It is due to the memory of the Rev. William Jackson, who was vicar of Christchurch from 1778 to 1802, that it should be recorded that he saved this valuable relic of Norman domestic architecture from destruction. He was evidently imbued with a spirit of love for antiquity by no means common a hundred years ago, and far too rare even at the present day.

DIMENSIONS OF CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

Extreme length 311 feet. Length of Nave 118 " 9 inches. Width of Nave 58 " 5 " Height of Nave 58 " Length of Transept 101 " 2 " Width of Transept 24 " 4 " Length of Choir 70 " Width of Choir with Aisles 60 " 6 " Height of Choir 63 " Length of side of Tower, E. to W. 27 " 9 " " " " N. to S. 22 " 4 " Height of Tower 120 " Length of Lady Chapel 36 " 4 " Width of Lady Chapel 21 " 1 " Length of St Michael's Loft 58 " 3 " Width of St Michael's Loft 19 " 7 "

AREA 18,300 sq. feet.



PLANS



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Transcriber's note:

Page 5: "commemerated" corrected to "commemorated."

THE END