The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  The abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century and most of it has disappeared as I described in my previous posting.

Still, there are traces of the abbey in and around Cirencester.  The abbey grounds were bordered on two sides by the old Roman wall of which some parts are gone but others are visible.  The Norman arch at the far corner of the grounds from the site of the church was erected as a gatehouse in the 12^th century.  Ruins of the Roman wall are visible running next to the River Churn.  Also, the wall that separated the abbey church from the nearby parish church and its churchyard is still standing.  The picture at the top shows a portion of the abbey wall as viewed from the churchyard of the parish church.

A sign along Dollar Street in Cirencester marks the medieval gatehouse or Dole Hall where alms were distributed by the monastery.  The street name, Dollar Street, a corruption of dole, is derived from this activity.  Just outside the abbey grounds are a few arches from the 12^th century Saint John’s Hospital which the abbey acquired in the 13^th century.  Also, on the edge of town are a dovecote and the barn of Barton Grange which the abbey owned and used.

The Corinium Museum has surviving artefacts from the abbey and displays which give the visitor a view of abbey life in the fourteenth century.  Artefacts from the abbey include carvings of monks and popes, medieval tiles, and pieces of stone fan vaulting.

The abbey also had responsibility for Saint John Baptist, the parish church of which the abbot was the rector.  I will talk more about that church in my next posting.  Shortly after the time of my story, the abbey built the south porch of the church and used the second storey of the porch as a town hall because they controlled the market.  Their newly built town hall overlooked the Marketplace.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Indeed, the abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.  The monastery, as it appears in my story set in 1395, was built in the 12^th century, included the church and cloister, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, infirmary, cellarium, and library.

None of these buildings exists today.  The monastic grounds are a great open expanse of grass forming a town park.  There are flat stones which outline where the abbey church was located as shown in the picture above.  A block of flats, also shown in the picture above, now sits to the northwest of where the church was located, but most of the area where monastic buildings once stood is now parkland.

Today a bandstand and small children’s playground are in the parkland which also features a couple of small brooks and the abbey fishpond.  The flowing brooks are a reminder that the abbey once controlled the milling in town. 

Tension between the abbey and the town was so severe that the townspeople welcomed the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.  Demolition of the abbey church began immediately, and townspeople eagerly used the stone monastic buildings as a quarry.  Some of the stones that were reused can be seen in present-day buildings of the town.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Indeed, the abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.

The monastery, as it appears in my story set in 1395, was originally built in the 12^th century and included the church and cloister, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, infirmary, cellarium, library, muniment room for storing robes, an inn for poor travellers and pilgrims, and the abbot’s house.  The major buildings are shown in the drawing above, which comes from the Corinium Museum in Cirencester.  The abbey church was originally built in the Norman style but was largely rebuilt in the 14^th century in the Gothic style and included an ambulatory being added around the quire.

The monastery was a community within a town.  Abbey grounds were surrounded by walls which had gates.  The monks slept in the dormitory, ate in the refectory, held meetings in the chapter house, and went into the church to pray and worship, all buildings within steps of each other facilitated by the cloister which connected them.

The Rule of Augustine was based on charity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the mutual duties of superiors and inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence, and reading during meals.  The physical layout of the monastery and its buildings were designed to facilitate the monks’ lifestyle based on the Rule.

Between twenty and forty monks, as well as lay-servants and lay-brothers, with the abbot in charge made up the population of the abbey.  Frequently the abbot was called away to the royal court, and this was the case at the time of my novel.  About that time, the Abbot of Cirencester was upgraded to being a mitred abbot which put him on a par with bishops.  His deputy who was in charge in the abbot’s absence was the prior, and my fictitious prior is a main character in my novel.

Individual monks oversaw various functions of abbey life.  The infirmarer oversaw the infirmary, the abbey’s version of a hospital or sick bay.  The cellarer was the monk in charge of provisions.  Keys are often associated with a cellarer because he needed access to the various storage facilities in the monastery as well as farms owned by the abbey.  The kitchener worked under the cellarer and managed the kitchen.  A chamberlain looked after day-to-day essentials of the monks.

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, set in 1395.  Historically the abbey played a major role in the town of Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.  Cirencester Abbey was founded by King Henry I in the early 12^th century and became the largest and wealthiest of the Augustinian abbeys in England.

The abbey church replaced a minster church which had been founded in the 9^th or 10^th centuries.  The new abbey church and monastery were started in 1117.  Serlo was named abbot and the Augustinian monks took possession in 1131.  The church building was not finished until 1176 when it was consecrated.

Under King Henry II, the manor or feudal lordship of Cirencester was transferred from the Crown to the abbey in 1189.  This gave the abbot considerable power over his manorial tenants in the town.  All townspeople had to do three days’ work a year in making the abbot’s hay and harvesting his grain.  Some tenants had to work a day a week on the abbot’s lands.  Others had to work specific periods on the abbey farms.  Tenants’ own grain had to be ground in the abbot’s mills which meant that the abbey and their millers benefited financially.

The abbot controlled the town market and owned considerable property around the marketplace.  Tenants could only buy and sell at the weekly markets provided they paid a tax to the abbot.  The abbey also controlled the parish church of which the abbot was rector.  Tenants found that they continually owed money to the abbot in matters of inheritance, death, and marriage.

In opposition to the extraordinary abbey control, the citizens or burgesses of Cirencester claimed that they had certain rights dating back to a royal charter they had been granted in 1133.  Every time they challenged the power of the abbey over town matters, the king ruled in favour of the abbey because the abbey declared that the town’s charter was a forgery. 

This constant frustration on the part of the burgesses went on for centuries, well beyond 1395 when my novel was set, so the domination of the abbey over the town and the tension it caused with the townspeople became an important element of my story.  I have set many scenes of my novel in and around the abbey grounds and have woven angry interactions between monks and townspeople into the story.

The picture at the top shows the Spital or Norman Gate to the abbey grounds.  This one gate and some of the abbey wall are the only structures above ground which have survived from the medieval abbey to the present day.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84