A Short History of All Saints Michael Blakstad, East Meon History Group
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A Short History of All Saints Michael Blakstad, East Meon History Group All Saints Church photographed by Chris Warren This is a history of the church building, set in the context of the social history of the institution and its parishioners; it is taken from a variety of sources. Firstly, the history of All Saints written by the previous vicar, the Reverend Terry Louden, from which I have derived information specific to this church1. Secondly, the monumental History of the English Parish by N.J.G.Pounds, which provides more general information about the development of church buildings and parish life2. Thirdly, research by East Meon History Group, much of it available on www.eastmeonhistory.net and in the monographs produced by the society Christianity was brought to the Meon Valley in the 7th century by one of two missionaries. Birinus, who came to Kent with Augustine of Canterbury, and may have come to the Meon Valley as part of the Jutish colonisation of Kent, the Isle of Wight and the Meon Valley, or by Wilfrid, from Lindisfarne, a pugnacious bishop, whom disagreements forced to go south on a mission to convert the South Saxons. 1 Rev Terry Louden History of All Saints East Meon History Website: http://www.eastmeonhistory.net/church/ 2 N.J.G.Pounds A History of the English Parish Cambridge University Press 2000 1 A reconstruction, by Hampshire County archivists, of East Meon at the time of the Domesday Book, now at La Musee de la Tapisserie, Bayeux The Saxon charter of 970 AD recounts: King Edgar granted ‘that famouse place which the locals have always called Aet Meon’ to his grandmother Eadgifu. Barbara Yorke believes it was a Minster, which would make this the ecclesiastical and administrative of a large area, which included the tithings of Steep, Langrish, Froxfield and Oxenbourne came within the parish. 900 acres. There are no traces of the original Saxon church, though some remains of the Saxon hall on which The Court Hall was later built. West wall, with norman doorway Norman arch over the transept 2 Norman arches in tower Layout of All Saints The twelfth-century church was cruciform in shape, consisting of nave, chancel and transept – defined by the rounded arches of the West and South doorways and central nave. It has been described as one of the finest examples in Southern England of what I was taught to call Norman but is now described as Romanesque architecture, and it has been compared with another of Henry of Blois’ creations, St Cross in Winchester3. Henry was the brother of King Stephen, was Chancellor of England and the richest and most powerful man in the country after the king. He gave East Meon its greatest treasure, the Tournai Font which was originally placed in the south treansept but was moved to its present position when the south aisle was later added. It is usually believed that the font was carved in Tournai, in the Netherlands, and shipped across the channel, but Henry actually established a workshop in Winchester of Tournai craftsmen and it is possible that it was carved there and carted to East Meon. The Tournai Font. Below, Adam and Eve are created, and Eve eats the forbidden fruit. Next page, top, they are banished from the garden and taught to dig and sew. Below, abstract decoration. (Photographs John Mackinlay) 3 Nicholas Riall ‘Henry of Blois, Bishop Winchester. A Patron of the Twelfth- Century Renaissance’ Hampshire Papers pp18-19. 3 In the Middle Ages, the church building played a central role not only in religious services but as the community centre of the parish and the other tithings. The ‘vestry’ was the administrative hub and at annual meetings yeoman farmers and other worthies were elected as churchwardens, sidesmen, overseers and surveyors,. They were all all unpaid and until the 19th century represented local government in tis country. They in turn employed the sexton, scribe and constables, who were paid out of the parish funds. On occasions, the western end of the church would be converted into a courtroom for the Archdeacon’s court, which decided on issues from sexual morality to wills and inventories. The vicar was probably the only literate person and would have written wills and other documents on behalf of his parishioners and taught the young. The nave housed many forms of social activity as well, including the convivial ‘church ales’ held on feast days. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the nave would have been a dark and smelly place. There would have been no seating, apart from stone benches along the walls where the elderly and disabled would have sat … hence the expression ‘going to the wall’. The Romanesque windows were tiny, the floor would have been soil, dogs probably had the freedom of the area and rushes would have been scattered both to make kneeling less uncomfortable and to absorb filfth. Incense during services helped to hide the stench; there are entries in churchwardens’ accounts for the clearance and replacement of the straw before saints’ days. Wealthy parishioners would have been buried inside the church, with a flat gravestone to commemorate them. The less-well-off were buried outside in the churchyard, in unmarked graves. The vicar fought a battle to keep parishioners and their animals from treating the churchyard as their own. 4 (Above) South aisle with Early English arches. (Right) the steeple, also added in the thirteenth century. In around 1250, the steeple was probably added to the tower and the south aisle and Lady Chapel were added, with their ‘Gothic’ (or ‘Early English’) pointed arches; the nave was extended and the Tournai font moved to the back. The reason for extending the church was probably not so much an increase in population but changes in religious practice; a second altar was needed to accommodate the number of masses which were commissioned on behalf of the souls of well-off sinners who had left money in their wills for that purpose, resulting in what one writer has described as a ‘celestial bombardment’. Like the main altar, it would have been of stone, set against the east wall, and the priest would have conducted the service with his back to the congregation. The walls would have been heavily decorated with moralities and paintings of biblical scenes. (There are traces of the painted halos of three saints, just detectable on the east wall of the north transept.) Some benches would by now have been introduced and occupied more space. Chantries and funerary monuments in the nave added to the clutter. The newly extended western end accommodated equipment which the parish owned, including fire buckets, long ladders and poles for extracting burning thatch. The parish ‘herse’ was also there, a frame of metal or wood, hired out for funerals. In the fourteenth century a rood screen would have been built to separate the chancel from nave. It would have contained carvings of saints and floral patterns, probably with a Cavalry, or rood, on top of the screen and a painting of the ‘doom’, or Last Judgment, on the arch above it. (There are remnants of the wall paintings on the east wall of the north transept.) The church would have been lit by lantern candles during services, glinting off the silver and pewter altar ware especially on feast days; The fact that during the Middle Ages only the priest received the wine meant that meant that only a small cup – a chalice – was necessary. But the admission of the body of adult parishioners to communion in both kinds required the replacement of the chalice by a much larger communion cup. The priest would have worn a coloured chasuble and cope. What would have been lacking, probably, was music. Some churches boasted a portable organ, but the full-blooded version we see today did not arrive until the 5 ninetheenth century. The cost of producing books meant that only the priest had access to the score, and he intoned the service as best he could. Congregational singing was not an established practice, but there were occasions when the ‘husky, tuneless’ voices of the peasantry made themselves heard. The candles, vestments, incense, as well as the maintenance of the nave and churchyard were all paid for by the parishioners. Candles were usually made within the parish, generally by elderly widows. The wardens bought the wax and put it out to the candlemakers. The bishops of Winchester, as rectors, were responsible for the maintenance of the chancel. They received the ‘greater’ tithes, i.e. one tenth of all crops and produce, on top of the rent to which they were entitled as landowners and lords of the two manors, and which were collected in the rectorial tithe barn, outside the Court Hall. The vicar, acting ‘vicariously’ for the rector, survived on the ‘lesser’ tithes, a tenth of the produce of the villagers’ vegetable patches, a modest stipend, the produce of the glebe land and fees from services, such as mortuaries paid at burials. Even before Henry VIII and the full-blooded Reformation, many churches saw their rood, and often its screen, removed, as well as some images. Under Henry, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth there was a bewildering ebb and flow of removal, destruction, restoration and renewed removal. The holes in the pillars to the west of the central transept show where the bracket were. As well as remaining rood screens, stone altars were removed under Henry and Edward, hastily restored as best they could under Mary, then taken down again under Elizabeth. They were replaced with wooden tables; the stone slabs which had formed their tops were made to serve as paving or even grave markers.