The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

Gloucester Cathedral in England was a monastic church in 1392 and played an important role in Memento Mori, the third novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  In the 14^th century, the present cathedral was the Abbey of Saint Peter which was the most important monastic house in Gloucester.  Lady Apollonia visited the abbey in my story and was amazed to observe the great east window from the ambulatory around the quire.

The east window is extremely large, 72 feet high by 38 feet wide.  It is the size of a tennis court and was the largest stained glass window in 14^th century England.  The east window of York Minster is also the size of a tennis court, but it was not built until the 15^th century.  Neither those who did the glazing nor the exact date of Gloucester’s window are known.  Perhaps the glazers came from Bristol, the nearest large city.  The armour of one of the figures depicted in the window suggests the period of the 1350’s.  I am confident that the window was installed by the end of Abbot Horton’s tenure in 1377, well before Apollonia’s visit in 1392.

There are several registers of lights containing various figures.  The subject of the window seems to be the coronation of the Virgin with a theme of hierarchy with heaven above and earth below.  Bands of red and blue glass run upwards from behind the high altar to the vaulting high above which is filled with heavenly angels.  The stained-glass figures shown in the many tiers of niches look as though they represent stone sculptures, each niche has a canopy rising to become a pedestal for the figure it holds.

The lowest stained glass tier displays the shields and coats of arms of noble families who may have contributed to the window’s construction.  One of the niches in this tier has, below the coat of arms, the surprising image of what appears to be a golfer swinging a club.  We have no idea why he is there or what he is really doing.

The next tier upward is thought to contain abbots of Gloucester and bishops of the Diocese of Worcester as well as three kings.  One of the kings, Edward II, was surely there in Apollonia’s time.  The other two may have been inserted later.  Saints are in the tier above this, and some of them can be identified by their attributes such as Saint Lawrence who is holding his symbol, a gridiron.  Saint Thomas is shown in the picture at the top.

Christ and the Virgin are centred on the next tier surrounded by apostles while the uppermost tier is filled with quires of angels.  The very top niche at the apex of this Gothic window consists of a 15^th or 16^th century image of Saint Clement.  We don’t know what was there in the 14^th century.  More likely it was God himself.

Two medieval tombs at Gloucester Cathedral are of interest to modern visitors of the church and both appear in my novel, Memento Mori, set in 1392 when the cathedral was the church of the Abbey of Saint Peter.  These tombs were seen by my heroine, Lady Apollonia, when her party visited the abbey church, as well as by Stedmund Falford, the villain who plays a role in my second and third novels.  Though King Edward II was no saint, his tomb had been extremely important in bringing pilgrims’ money to the abbey to pay for the redecoration of the building which occurred in the years just preceding my story.

Another tomb in Gloucester celebrates the death of Robert, Duke of Normandy, in 1134 at Cardiff Castle.  Robert, nicknamed Curthose or short socks because of his stature, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, inheriting the title of Duke of Normandy on his father’s death in 1087.  His brothers outmanoeuvred him for the English throne, and he was imprisoned for the last 28 years of his life.  Originally, he was buried in front of the high altar at Gloucester Abbey.  A wooden effigy, shown above, was carved in the 13^th century and replaced that burial.  It was in front of the high altar near the original burial when I first saw it but has now been in the south quire aisle for over two decades.  The effigy has been much restored over the centuries including work on it by my friend, Les Jewell, an ecclesiastical wood carver who was based in Exeter.

The death of King Edward II played a minor role in my first novel, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof. My character, the Abbot of Kingswood Abbey, was influenced in his actions by not wanting to repeat the squandered opportunity committed by one of his predecessors in the 13^th century who refused to accept the body of King Edward after his death.  Kingswood at that time had refused to receive the body of Edward II out of fear of his enemies so he was taken to Gloucester.  The abbey not only received the king’s body, after his royal burial, Gloucester’s abbey benefited from the financial gifts of King Edward III, allowing it to make the improvements I mentioned earlier.

The generosity of Edward’s son, King Edward III, helped transform the east of the nave with a new Perpendicular Gothic skin covering the Norman building as I described earlier.  One of the deliveries of these royal funds plays a role in the plot of Memento Mori.  The tomb of Edward II was carved in the English Decorated Gothic style and the effigy was carved out of alabaster, a new medium for carvers at the time.  The royal tombs drew many pilgrims to Gloucester

For more on Robert Curthose, click on
http://professor-moriarty.com/info/section/church-monument-art/13th-century-church-monuments-robert-curthose-duke-normandy-gloucester-c  or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Curthose

For more on King Edward II, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England

Gloucester Cathedral in England in 1392 was a monastic church and played an important role in Memento Mori, the third novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  It was the Abbey of Saint Peter in the 14^th century and was the most important monastic house in Gloucester.  My last posting discussed the Norman architecture of the cathedral.  I would now like to focus on the Gothic architecture of the church.

Some parts of the church, especially in the transepts and the quire have the newer, Gothic style of architecture, built as a skin over the original, massive Norman constructions.  The vault in the nave of 1242 is Early English Gothic, replacing the wood vault of the Norman church with stone.  Then, after the burial of King Edward II following his assassination in nearby Berkeley Castle in 1327, Gloucester became the place where the newer English Perpendicular style was developed.

Edward II’s young son, King Edward III, was willing to invest royal funds in the improvement of much of the abbey church to honour his father when he became king. He allowed royal masons to experiment between 1335 and 1355 with the French “Rayonnant” style to create perpendicular tracery which covered the existing Norman structure in the transepts, the quire, and the presbytery as shown in the drawing above.  The walls were extended upward leading to a new magnificent stone vault design over the quire and presbytery.  Finally, an enormous stained glass east window was installed which I will discuss in a posting later this month.

The earliest known fan vaulting in England was developed for the Gloucester cloisters around 1352 when they were rebuilt on the north side of the church.  A few other changes to the church came in the 15^th century after the time of Memento Mori.  These are a Gothic extension to the west end of the nave, a new central tower, and a new Lady Chapel.  Otherwise, the architecture you see today is much the same as in Lady Apollonia’s time.

For more on the architecture of Gloucester cathedral, click on
http://www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk/history-heritage/architecture/

Gloucester Cathedral in England was a monastic church in 1392 and played an important role in Memento Mori, the third novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  It was the Abbey Church of Saint Peter in the 14^th century and was the most important monastic house in Gloucester.  My last posting discussed the history of the cathedral.  Here I will focus on the surviving Norman architecture still to be seen in the church.

Norman architecture in England is the Romanesque style brought from the Continent by William the Conqueror and his followers.  Its rounded arches were used by the ancient Romans and became popular throughout Europe by the 11^th century.  Massive columns and thick walls with small window openings were characteristic of these buildings.  This was the style of the church begun by Abbot Serlo in 1089.  The quire and transepts had been completed when the church was dedicated in 1100, just four years before Abbot Serlo’s death in 1104.  The nave was not finished until some years after his passing.

The footprint of today’s church and chapter house is essentially that of Serlo’s Norman abbey.  Today’s crypt is also from the Norman period.  The present building has two additional 15^th century Lady bays at the west end of the nave and a 15^th century Lady Chapel that replaced an earlier one at the east end.  The drawing above shows how much of the Norman church and chapter house remains today even though the interior walls of the quire and transepts were covered by a Gothic skin in the 14^th century as I will describe in my next posting.

The chapter house will be described more fully in a posting later this month, however I would like to discuss the ambulatory around the quire and the crypt, as areas where the Norman architecture is very much in evidence.  The horseshoe-shaped ground level ambulatory around the quire, as well as the gallery in the storey above it, remain to this day in the heavy Norman style.  The ambulatory passageway provides access to side chapels on the southeast and northeast sides of the horseshoe while on the east side, there is access to a Lady Chapel.

The crypt, one of the first things built in the Norman style, is similar in layout to the Norman quire which was built above it, except that five chapels are attached to the horseshoe-shaped ambulatory around its central chamber.  Later, when the Gothic revisions were made in the space above, stone support was added to the pillars and arches to strengthen the crypt.

Just north of the church were Norman passageways, called slypes, which served as parlours where monks could meet to socialise with each other or with visitors.

For more on the architecture of Gloucester cathedral, click on
http://www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk/history-heritage/architecture/

For the last three months, I have been posting articles on this blog related to Plague of a Green Man, the second novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  This novel is set in Exeter, England, in 1380.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Exeter and Devon and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

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Happy reading!

The Devon Coast as shown above, from Beer in the east to Exmouth and downriver from Exeter, is important in Plague of a Green Man, the second book of my West Country Mysteries.  A quarry at the village of Beer has been used since Roman times and provided stone for the building of Exeter Cathedral, as did stone from Salcombe Regis further west along the coast.  A character in my story, Adam Braund, lived in the Littleham Parish of Exmouth and made his living by transporting stone from these quarries to the Exe Estuary, then upriver to Exeter.  In 1380, Exeter Cathedral still needed stone to complete the top register of carvings on the image screen of its west front, only finished in the 15^th century.

There were other uses for the quarry at Beer which also entered my story.  A gang of smugglers on this piece of coastline used the Beer quarry to store their loot until they could distribute it.  The gang of smugglers was based on the reality of medieval gangs which often served noblemen who enabled and protected them.  The aristocrats who ran the smuggling operation in my story lived nearby.

In modern times, the stretch of coastline from Exmouth to Beer is a part of the South West Coastal Path from Minehead in Somerset on the Bristol Channel, along the north Devon coast, around the north and south coasts of Cornwall, along the south coast of Devon facing the English Channel, and on to Poole Harbour in Dorset.  The Coastal Path is 630 miles in length and continually rises from sea level where a river or stream flows into the ocean up to headlands atop cliffs only to fall back to sea level again at the mouth of the next river or stream.  Hiking all the rises along the Coastal Path adds up to four ascents of Mount Everest.

My husband and I enjoyed hiking the Coastal Path at various points in Somerset, Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset, but we especially liked to walk various parts of it between Exmouth and Beer during the four years we lived in Exeter.  We could use public transportation to access stretches between Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton or from Budleigh to Sidmouth.  We hiked from Sidmouth to Salcombe Regis and back or from Beer to Branscombe and back.  The views are beautiful and unspoiled, inspiring me to use this portion of the coast in my story.

From Exmouth to Beer, the coast line is the western end of the 96-mile-long Jurassic Coast Heritage Site which extends well into the neighbouring shire of Dorset.  The Jurassic Coast displays 185 million years of geological history from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods where erosion has exposed rock from each of these different periods.

For more on the Beer quarry caves, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Quarry_Caves
For more on the South West Coast Path, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Coast_Path
For more on the Jurassic Coast, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Coast

Bowhill Manor is a house in the Saint Thomas Parish of Exeter which inspired a house I described in Plague of a Green Man, the second novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  The actual house was started in 1422, some 42 years after the time of my novel, but visiting this house gave me ideas for Reliant Cottage, the house of Phyllis of Bath in my story.

Saint Thomas Parish was across the River Exe from the walled medieval city of Exeter in 1380, the year of my novel.  In the story, Lady Apollonia wished to visit Phyllis in her home and stopped at the parish church on the way to visit Phyllis.  The church was a chapel on the far end of the bridge over the Exe in 1380.  Four years later, that version of the parish church was washed away in a flood.  Afterwards, it was rebuilt away from the river and remains there to the present.

Bowhill Manor is located on Dunsford Hill along the main road heading west south-west from the medieval bridge in the general direction of Dartmoor.  The house has largely been in private hands over the centuries, but was restored in the 20^th century by English Heritage.  To get a current assessment of the building, click on
http://www.drewpearce.co.uk/_assets/images/commercial/6413%20bowhill/details%2060-3041%20bowhill%20house.pdf .

Bowhill is built around a courtyard.  Perhaps its most striking feature is its great hall with its barrel-vaulted roof, meaning the vault at the top of the roof forms a half cylinder.  A picture of the barrel-vaulted roof is shown above.  On one end of the great hall is storage space on two levels with the upper level being not as high as the great hall.  A wooden screen is on the other end of the great hall, separating it from the parlour which has with a solar above it.  These are the kinds of spaces visited by my heroine, the Lady Apollonia, in Reliant Cottage.

In Bowhill, itself, the buttery is next as one moves clockwise around the house.  Then comes a storage room, a passage to the courtyard, the south-range kitchen, and finally the main kitchen.

Stepcote Hill and the medieval bridge in Exeter both appear in Plague of a Green Man, the second novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  Stepcote Hill is one of the oldest streets in Exeter.  It gets its name, not from the steps on either side of the street but from its steep descent from the city centre down to the West Gate.  This is the path which two of my villains followed in leaving the city.  Beyond the West Gate, the medieval bridge was erected in 1238 as the first stone bridge spanning part of Exe Island and the River Exe.  It was the third stone bridge in all of England and consisted of 18 arches with a chapel at each end.

Stepcote Hill had served since Roman times as the major route into Exeter for strings of pack horses and weary travellers coming from the west.  It continued to be used centuries after my story.  William of Orange rode up the hill into Exeter with a large force.  They were on their way from Brixham, where they landed, to London to take the crown from King James II.

Saint Mary Steps Church stands at the base of the hill on one side, across from it are a couple of 15^th century buildings, a bit late for my story.  Yet, as you stand by the church and look up the hill, it maintains the feel of a narrow medieval street.  The picture above is taken near the bottom of the hill showing Saint Mary Steps Church on the right and ruins of the medieval wall near the West Gate beyond.  Interestingly, the ancient jettied house beyond the church was moved to its present location in the 20^th century, but it contributes to the historical charm of the location.

The chapel at the west end of the bridge housed the church for Saint Thomas Parish in 1380.  My heroine, Lady Apollonia, visited this church, in my story, on her way to visit Phyllis of Bath who lived in that parish.  In real life, the chapel was destroyed in a flood in 1384, and thereafter the parish church was built in another location on solid ground.

In the 18th century, the western half of the medieval bridge crossing the main channel of the River Exe was demolished and replaced by a new bridge, but the other half of the medieval bridge stands as a ruin on Exe Island with remnants of Saint Edmunds Church still at its eastern end.  The 18^th century replacement was a little upstream and more in line with Fore Street than with the West Gate.  The 20th century brought three new bridges, now using steel in their construction.  The 1905 bridge which replaced the Georgian bridge was demolished in the 1960’s to make way for two one-way bridges which are part of a huge traffic circle.

For more on Stepcote Hill or the Exeter’s medieval bridge, click on
http://www.exetermemories.co.uk and search for these subjects.

Exeter, the setting for Plague of a Green Man, the second of my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, had a thriving woollen trade for centuries before and after 1380, the time of my book.  It is the success of the city’s woollen production that drew Lady Apollonia and her second husband, the franklin Edward Aust, to Exeter.  By the 14^th century there were guilds in Exeter, made up of free man in the various trades related to the woollen business.

One location in Exeter that was important to the production of woollen cloth was Exe Island, located just outside the city wall near the West Gate and the medieval bridge over the River Exe as shown above.  The marshy and sandy banks between the river and the city were first drained in the 10^th century to reclaim the marshy land for industry and commerce.  Higher Leat created Exe Island, which was a separate manor belonging to the Courtenays, Earls of Devon.  Land along the leats or water channels was used for various activities including mills for grinding grain as well as for the fulling of woollen cloth.  Exe Island also became the quarter of Exeter for dye houses and other cloth industries.

The fulling of wool cloth is mentioned in my story.  Urine was used in this process going back to Roman times, to cleanse the wool from oil and dirt.  Eventually other substances came into use, but urine was still used in the time of my novel.  The wool was beaten in various ways which became more automated with the water available to provide power in fulling mills.  Eventually the cloths were hung on racks to dry. Workers who did such jobs were called fullers or tuckers or simply walkers.

The guilds of weavers, fullers, and shearmen joined together in the 15^th century to build Tuckers Hall which stands today on Fore Street in Exeter.  In 1380, before the construction of Tucker’s Hall, these workers met at a pub on Exe Island called the Bishop Blaize which also can be visited today.  Some events in Plague of a Green Man happen there.  It is named after an Armenian, Bishop Blaize, who was the patron saint of clothmakers.  The symbol of his martyrdom is a woolcomb.

An aulnage was an official of the king who oversaw the inspection of cloth to guarantee that it was manufactured to fixed standards of size and quality. When satisfied, he would then fix his seal upon it. Aulnagers were first appointed by Edward I. Moreton Molton, the aulnage in Exeter in 1380, plays an important role in my story.

For more on fulling, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling .

For more on Exe Island, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exe_Island .