Glaftonbury Abbey from Interior Arcade saintMary’s Chapel

                                                            

THERE is no religious foundation in England whose history carries us so far back as that of Glastonbury.

Its origins really are lost in the mists of antiquity.

True, in later times people became very precise about them, but when we come to test their assertions these melt away under the touch.

 It is impossible here to write down all the mythical history that gathered about the place.

 I will try to set down what is not seriously disputed,  then notice some of the more famous of the legends.

Long before the Saxons (the English) came to this country—far back in the days of British princelings—some Christian missionaries built a little church of wattles in the district called Avalon. Whether that was in the second or third century or later, there is no way of telling. Not unnaturally the date was eventually put back to the firSt century.

The church was old in the time of St. Paulinus, Archbishop of York—that is, in the early years of the seventh century—and he cased it over with wood and lead.

From the first year of the same century 601 purports to come a grant made by a

King of Damnonia

 the same word as Devon of the land called Ynyswitrin to the

 “ old church,”

and an abbot, Worgret, is the head of the community.

A hundred years later (700 or so) King Ina gives a charter and builds what was then considered a great church, to the eaSt of the old one.

By this time we are well into the Saxon period, and you muSt note that there has been no word of devastation of the place by heathen Saxons. They were Christianised before they took over this part of the country. Thus Glastonbury passed intakt from British to English hands. It is the only foundation which did so.

That the history of the earlier centuries should be filled in a little was natural. St. Patrick and St. Benignus, his disciple, are credited with having sojourned here in the fifth century ; nay, the bodies of both were said to lie here . St Bridget came, and lived at Beokery, Little Ireland, another islet in (In marsh. And in the sixth century St. David (d. 546) came and built an addition to the Old Church at the eastern end. The dimensions of the addition were very precisely set down by the chroniclers of the Abbey.

 Gildas, the historian, too, died and was buried here in 512.

 Of these Statements (and there are more like them) the moSt credible is that about St. David. But all of these represent a truth, that Glastonbury was so sacred a resort in those centuries that the great lights of the Celtic Church would be likely visitors to it.

If traditions of this class are not fairly to be called fabulous, some, which crystallised later, are of that description.

William of Malmesbury, who saw the charter, says the king’s name was illegible, but I have seen it in Mr. Bligh Bond’s book given as Gwrgan.

G L A S T O N B U R Y   ABBEY

Glastonbury Abbey was founded on an eminence above the meres by King Ine about the year 700.

Legend .  tells that its history goes back yet further , that  Joseph of Arimathea landed at Glastonbury bringing the Holy Grail with him, that he had been sent out by

 St Philip, Christ’s disciple, to evangelize Britain, and that he built an oratory of wattle and sand, the venerable vetusta ecclesia.

 Legend also identifies Glastonbury with Avalon and makes it the burial place of King Arthur.

With these traditions Glastonbury can in fairness be called the most famous of Britain’s monasteries. St Dunstan was a monk here, and then abbot.

He is said to have repaired the buildings which had been damaged by the Danes.

King Edgar made generous gifts towards Dunstan’s new works and was, when he died in 975, buried in the abbey.

 After the Conquest a large scheme of rebuilding was set afoot , and probably completed by about 1120 or earlier.

 All this was burnt in the disastrous fire of 1184. Immediately after a new vetusta ecclesia and a new abbey church were begun in axis with each other and carried on simultaneously, the former, St Mary’s Chapel, so rapidly that it could be consecrated in 1186, the latter more slowly.

The style was at the outset a Late Norman Transitional but seems to have changed at once into a well understood Early Gothic - probably under the influence of the designs of the great architect who began Wells Cathedral about 1180.

Work in the church went on into the middle of the C13 and beyond.

Under Abbot Fromond  1303-22  the crossing tower was completed and the E part of the nave vaulted.

Under Abbot de Sodbury 1323-34 the nave vault was completed,

under Abbot Walter de Monington 1342-74 the choir lengthened and re-faced and a retrochoir added, and finally under.

Abbots Richard Bere  1493-1524  and Richard Whiting  1524- 39  an E chapel for the remains of King Edgar erected.

The whole church from the Edgar Chapel to St Mary’s Chapel was in the end c. 580 ft long  nave, chancel, and retrochoir c. 375 .

The plan of the church will be described later, but a word must here be said of the church of King Ine and of St Dunstan,

i.e. of c, 700 and c. 950, of which excavations of 1928, etc., have revealed much.

The results have to be read;

 they were unfortunately not left exposed. King Ine’s church had an oblong nave c. 42 ft long with the usual portions instead of aisles and with a chancel arch c. 14 ft wide.

The form of the chancel is unknown.

 It was replaced by a square chancel in the c 8 or C9, when also further portions were built to the 1. and r. of the w end and perhaps a narthex or atrium.

St Dunstan extended the chancel yet further (21 by 17 ft) and added two more porticus to the 1. and r. of his chancel.

 The chancel may have carried a tower.

The building according to the excavations must have been a group of loosely connected square and oblong chambers and cannot have possessed much architectural unity.

The surviving buildings are described in the following order:

St Mary’s Chapel, Abbey Church, Monastic Buildings.

They were all built of Doulting stone.

S t M a r y ’ s C h a p e l .

Begun in 1184 and dedicated in 1186.

A plain oblong, four bays long, with pronounced angle turrets - an early forerunner of Late Medieval Royal chapels.

With its decorative motifs and the relation of them to plain wall it is a Norman building

Secular Architecture: South Petherton, King Ine’s Palace bay-window

 On the ground floor outside tall intersecting arches, on the upper floor big round-arched windows.

 arranged at the w end in a generously spaced group of three.

The ornament on both levels is typically Latest Norman, that is zigzags and similar motifs crenellations with triangular merlons, etc.placed not parallel with the wall nor indeed at

right angles to it, but at an angle of 45 degrees.

 The angle turrets also have intersecting arches.

Before beginning to watch for certain details which tend to disturb the so far simple evidence, a look at the roofless interior is to be recommended. Here also are intersecting arches, but they are enriched by medallions or paterae of foliage, and the foliage is of the Early Gothic stiffleaf variety.

The zigzag, lozenges, etc., however, remain what they are outside.

 But, and this is the essential point, the chapel was vaulted, and the vaults are fully-understood Gothic.

Not only were they rib-vaults - there are after all plenty of  Norman rib-vaults including some in Somerset parish churches, and including also the new building which was stylistically the most important for Glastonbury, the w end of Worcester Cathedral of c. 1175-80 - but they were consistently pointed as shown by the surviving pointed wall-arches or dosserets.

The transverse arches again have rich zigzag motifs set transversely.

Now to support these vaults the outside was given buttresses up to the height of their springing, and they are shafted in the angles with keeled shafts and have clearly crocket-capitals, that is the capitals of the French Gothic style of exactly that moment.

 Thus Norman tradition and Gothic requisites of structure, and also Norman ornament and French Gothic ornament, stand side by side - kept so neatly separate that one is tempted to assume two masters, one who planned the Late Norman chapel, and a second who replaced him almost at once and rushed to apply the new Gothic methods and idiom as far as could still be done.

The gabled N and .s doorways would, in the opinion of most scholars, form part of this story; for they exhibit the same odd combination.

The general disposition is entirely in the Anglo-Norman and more specifically in West-Country traditions. Malmesbury of c. 1165 in particular ought to be compared.

There also figures are small and set in foliage trails and roundels, and no break by 9b capitals or abaci is made between jambs and arches.

 The style of sculpture at Glastonbury on the other hand is not entirely Anglo-Norman.

The wedge-stones or voussoirs show details entirely Gothic, entirely French and hardly possible before c. 1230, that is the beginning of the w front at Wells.

 What happened then? On the side the medallions were never completed.  Only two are recognizable, the creation of Eve , and the Fall.

 Could they not on the N  side have been finished later than any of the other work? On the N side there are in the inner order of wedge-stones the Annmiciation, Visitation, Nativity, and the Magi with Herod.

 In the next order the Magi (kneeling) can again be recognized, then the Magi asleep in their beds, and then the Massacre, with Herod on his throne and his soldiers in exact armour of the period. But there is also a woman milking a cow.

As antecedents for Glastonbury, Malmesbury and Worcester have been mentioned; and they seem indeed the immediate premisses, always subject of course to the possibility of others having been destroyed.

Malmesbury in the sixties has pointed arches in a Norman setting, Worcester in the seventies a combination of pointed and round, and in addition keeled shafts and zigzag at r. angles to the wall, just like Glastonbury, and moreover at Worcester the aisles are rib-vaulted, and the decorative motif of paterae occurs consistently.*

The Abbey C h u r c h was begun in the same year as St Mary’s Chapel, ie in 1184. How fast building proceeded, we do not know.

 There is no early dedication recorded, and not enough remains to arrive at safe conclusions.

 The plan of the whole church is laid out in the grass, easy to understand. St Mary’s Chapel is continued to the E in a galilee of the same width, a width slightly less than that of the nave of the church. The nave is accompanied by aisles and has nine bays.

 On the s side was the cloister, on the N side a big porch of an internal depth equal to that of two bays of the nave. Crossing and transepts with E aisles and two E chapels to each transept.

Aisled choir of five bays and straight-ended aisled retrochoir of two bays, and then the aisleless Edgar Chapel of 87 ft length.

 What survives, apart from the plan, is something of the outer walls of the c 14 retrochoir and the late c 12 chancel aisles, a large and tall fragment of the E crossing piers and adjoining transept walls, a three-bay stretch of outer wall of the s aisle, a substantial portion of the w front, and the outer walls of the galilee.

The late C 12 c h a n c e l has the same mixture of Norman and Gothic as St Mary’s Chapel, though the proportion between the two is now reversed.

There are still the old zigzags,

* For the Crypt underneath St Mary’s Chapel,

but the capitals are crocheted, and the arches are pointed with a purpose. The shafted windows also are pointed.

 The aisle vaults rested on triple wall-shafts as at the w end of Worcester  circa 1175-80, and the ribs had a similar profile too.

The retrochoir was added by Abbot Monington (1342-74), but he seems to have preserved the same composition at least for the aisles - see the wall shafts, though their bases give away the later date.

Abbot Monington also vaulted  or re-vaulted at a higher level ?  the chancel itself, and of the way in which he proceeded the blank panelling just E of the n e crossing pier is evidence .

There remain five tiers of small blank-arched singlelight panels.

So one has to assume an arrangement based on that of the Gloucester choir, whereby the new style was put as a veneer on the late C12 or early C13 walls, and the new higher and probably wider clerestory windows were made part of that grid.

As an early case of the Perp style in Somerset this choir must be remembered .

The Edgar Chapel was an oblong, built by Abbot Bere and enriched by an apse on the pattern of Henry 7,s  Chapel at Westminster ? by Abbot Whiting immediately after.

The transept E side is most helpful in reconstructing the original appearance of the upper parts of the church of 1184,etc. The elevation consists of arcade, triforium, and wall

passage in front of the clerestory windows. The piers of the arcade consist of a large number of shafts grouped towards the transept cnave’ so as to carry with a central triple shaft

the transverse arch and the ribs of the high vaults, with further shafts for the moulded arcade arches, and with

one shaft between these two groups to carry a wall-arch taller than the arcade and lower than the high vault. This wall-arch frames arcade and triforium together - a peculiarity of some

earlier c 12 churches in England and Scotland of which Jedburgh and Oxford are the most familiar examples, whereas

Tewkesbury and Romsey are the examples nearest to Glastonbury. The arcade arches still have zigzag decoration. So have the arcade-cum-triforium arches. The small arches of

the grouped triforium - three to each bay - are trefoiled and not pointed. In the spandrels above lozenge-shaped paterae. The clerestory windows are shafted (shafts with three shaftrings) and flanked by smaller pointed arches with two orders

of shafts (also with shaft-rings). Square paterae above these

arches. The details of capitals, etc., here are clearly early c 13.

* Height of the chancel c. 90 ft.

lie further west  than the cloister ranges, sw of St Mary’s Chapel. They are a fragment of the alm onry with part of a fine rib-vault and the complete abbot ’ s kitchen , one of the

best preserved medieval kitchens in Europe (for England cf. Durham and Chichester). The date of its erection is not known. The second half of the C14 seems most likely. The

kitchen is square in plan but with fireplaces fitting the four corners so as to result in an octagonal interior. Octagonal truncated pyramid roof with tall lantern, crowned by a

further truncated pyramid roof with a yet smaller lantern and a tiny octagonal pyramid top. The external square is heavily enforced by curved buttresses. The windows are Dec,

of two lights, and simple in design. The fireplaces are arched, and the arches slightly chamfered. In the kitchen the Abbey museum , with many architectural fragments, a large number

of tiles and a m onum ent of the early c 13 to an Abbot (William Vigor f 1223?). Above the head a cinque foiled gablette.

gatehouse . The Abbey Gatehouse faces Market Street.

There are two entrances, one for vehicles and one for pedestrians. Depressed two-centred arches, double-chamfered without capitals. Above the pedestrians’ entrance is a two-light

window, and this is repeated symmetrically further 1. Where the Porter’s House is attached to the Gatehouse. This is of two storeys and has a big canted central bay-window with

battlements. The front is of six lights, the canted sides of two each.

barn . Close to the se comer of the walled Abbey area. It

is of stone and has a length of three bays plus porch plus two bays. The arms of Abbot Bere date it as c. 1500 or a little later.

The porch arch is four-centred and double-chamfered and has no capitals to rest on. On the short sides one window each in

the gable which is in the shape of an arch head filled with three cusped spheric triangles. Interior with collar-beam roof.

St J o h n . A c 15 church. With few hardly noticeable exceptions built after the collapse in 1403 of the Norman crossing tower.

Its tall w tower with its lively crown announces the approaching town and has been alone in announcing it since the towers

of the abbey have disappeared. The tower is the second tallest of any Somerset parish church (134-2- ft high). It deserves

close study from near to. It has set-back buttresses with a first set of shafts carrying pinnacles above the ground-stage,

The nave continued this system, but from fragments found it is certain that, when the triforium stage was reached, the c 13 was over (ball-flower decoration in the triforium arches). All that remains in situ is the outer s aisle wall, and here the C13 design was kept for five bays. Then there is clearly a break in the treatment of the vaulting springers, and it is assumed that it marks the period of Abbot de Sodbury, i.e. the second quarter of the c 14. The outer wall as preserved has windows, round-headed inside but pointed outside. The w wall of the nave has, to the 1. and r. of the w portal, trefoiled recesses of the same kind as in the transept triforium. The west portal is not high. It is covered by a depressed pointed arch of English

c 13 type. Above this towards the w is a tympanum, and doorway and tympanum are framed by a stately, finely moulded arch on four orders of shafts. The tympanum is decorated

by blank stepped arcading with foiled or cusped heads. The centre arch is trefoiled, those to the 1. and r. have two rising

foils or lobes each.

The west  portal faces into the galilee . This has tall trefoiled blank arcading inside (shafts with shaft-rings), an elegant norman doorway with segmental head inside and two orders of shafts

outside, and upper windows re-made probably in the C15.

At about the same time a crypt was built beneath the galilee

and then also beneath St Mary’s Chapel. The details of the

latter are clearly Perp, but those of the former are equally

clearly of the C13. To realize this it is only necessary to examine rib profiles and wall-shaft profiles. The explanation

of re-used materials is not wholly convincing. The vault under

the galilee consists of oblong bays with a longitudinal ridgerib and a short transverse ridge-rib against the ends of which

run the diagonal ribs which rise from the four corners.

M onastic B uildings . The cloister was about 135 by

135 ft. On its e side was the oblong chapter house , on its

s side the refectory with an undercroft with a row of central

supports. O f the w side little remains, s of the w end of the

Refectory was the detached square m onk s * kitchen with

two curved projections at the sw and se angles and four

central supports. The E range was continued to the s beyond the s wall of the Refectory by the dormitory range, also with an undercroft with middle supports. The undercroft was subdivided into three rooms, s of the Dormitory are the visible remains of the drains of the RERE-DORTER or lavatories.

But the most considerable remains of the monastic quarters

and a second at the bell-stage. The w doorway is uncommonly

large, has tracery in the spandrels, big leaf sprays in one hollow

of jambs and arch, and a niche to the 1. and one to the r. There

follows a six-light w window again with two niches, and then

the display on the N and s sides starts also. Up the centres of

the s and N sides and up from the apex of the w window rise

triangular shafts ending in the intermediate pinnacles of the

crown. The next stage and the bell-stage are one composition,

both very tall. The lower stage of the two is covered with twin

two-light panelling with two transoms, and the vertical lines

o f this are then taken up at the bell-stage by two four-light

bell-openings with two transoms. On top of this stands the

crown. Battlements pierced by arcading in two tiers. Big

square angle pinnacles with crockets, accompanied by junior

pinnacles and in addition by one which stands free of the

corner corbelled out on a gargoyle. It is these projecting shafts

and pinnacles which tend to make the crown look exuberantly

top-heavy. The intermediate pinnacles on the middles of the

sides whose source has been traced down to lower stages are

also accompanied by junior pinnacles.

The s side of the church is all embattled, with pinnacles on the porch and the transept. The porch is two-storeyed with

niches and a lierne-vault. The lower storey dates from 1428,

the upper from shortly before 1498. The transept has a fourlight window to the s, a five-light window to the E. The s chapel, to distinguish it specially, has five-light windows on

s and E. Then follows the short chancel with its seven-light E

window. The tracery below the transom is curious and capricious. It has no exact parallel anywhere. The chancel has

some traces of the building preceding the present. They have

been uncovered both outside and inside. But the chancel arch

belongs in its date to the chapel arches and the aisle arcades, i.e. the C15. The nave appears tall with its clerestory - Tightsome’ is the word used by Leland for it. The arcade is of

seven bays and piers of standard section, with four hollows,

the four little round capitals of the shafts sparingly decorated

with rosettes. Between the clerestory windows on angel-busts stand shafts which carry the Somerset roof of c. 1495-1500, a specimen not particularly ornate. The arches into the chancel chapels are lower and four-centred. The arches into the

transepts with their plainer mouldings could be pre-1403.

T h e transepts certainly existed then; for not only does the existence of a Norman crossing tower make the exist­ door). - sculpture . Small Italian C15 marble relief of the

Nativity (s aisle). Bought in Sicily. - Small ivory Crucifixus, Italian?, Baroque, - pain t in g . On the altar of the s transept.

Christ Crucified, with the Virgin, St John, and Ecclesia and

Synagogue, German (?), late c 15. Early in the C20 the picture

was in the church of Pepinster near Liege, - stained glass .

Chancel N, a good collection of C15 glass, put together so as

to give the impression of a complete window. The kneeling

figures at the foot specially handsome. - Chancel s, rather

more a patchwork of original glass. - vestments . Pall of

Abbot Whiting, with Assumpton and floral sprays. It must: have been a fine piece of embroidery originally. - Gremial (Apron) of Abbot Whiting, with an extremely pretty spray of Tudor roses. - plate . Elizabethan Chalice by Ions of Exeter;

Salver by John Bignell 1725; Salver and Flagon by Gurney &' Co. 1744. - MONUMENTS. In the chancel N and s Richard Atwell f 1476 and Jane Atwell f 1485. He was a wealthy cloth merchant and no doubt helped to pay for the church. Two similar tomb-chests. The brass effigies are lost. Against both

tomb-chests small figures between the usual panels with shields. - John Camell, c. 1470 (s transept). Alabaster effigy.

Against the tomb-chest angels and camels. - Tomb-chest (n

transept), large and with open lid. Quatrefoils with shields on the sides. Saint Benedict . The church was rebuilt by Abbot Bere c. 1520. His initials are over the N porch and on a roof-corbel in the n

aisle, w tower with set-back buttresses, tall two-light bellopenings with transom and Somerset tracery, a shaft ending in

a pinnacle between them, battlements and big square pinnacles accompanied by pinnacles which continue long shafts standing on the buttresses. The interior has the tower arch panelled between thin shafts. Arcade of four bays with the

abbey christon the road to glastonbury roadtwo kodamnonia priddy

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