Tales from Tour Guides: 23

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral, written during lockdown.

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The West Front, Pope Innocent III and King John

By Norman Tregaskis

The Normans began building Peterborough Abbey Church in 1118 and, progressing westwards, reached the inner west wall in the 1190s (for simplicity, let’s say 1198, taking 80 years in round figures).

Completed in 1238 (without the porch), the West Front took another 40 years – half the time taken to build the main body of the church.

Why so unbelievably long?

According to Jonathan Foyle*, the West Front had risen to just above the three arches by about 1208 (10 years), yet the gables, gable rooves and the tower tops took 30 years more. What happened? Coincidentally, in March 1208 during a row with King John, Pope Innocent III placed an Interdict upon England, forbidding church services countrywide. This act, and King John’s response, had profound effects upon the population and the Church, and stopped construction. Perhaps understanding the Interdict, its consequences and the main actors will help to explain the West Front hiatus.

Pope Innocent III, from a fresco at Sacro Speco. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Pope Innocent III was enthroned in 1198, and in his maiden speech, set out his stall by describing himself thus:

“See therefore what kind of servant he is who commands the whole family. He is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter … he is the mediator between God and man, less than God, greater than man”.

Previously, all Popes had been called ‘the Vicar of Peter’ but, by appointing himself Vicar of Christ, Innocent declared his authority as supreme over the rulers of the Christian world.

John was the youngest of King Henry II’s four sons. His instinctive lust for power was thwarted by being lowest on the succession ladder and lacking prospective inheritance. This left him resentful and volatile. Chroniclers described him as having “distasteful – even dangerous – personality traits, such as pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty”; another said “he had the mental abilities of a great king but the inclinations of a petty tyrant”. However, family rebellion and the deaths of King Henry II and two of his sons advanced Richard to King and John to Heir Apparent. On Richard I’s death in 1199, John was finally King.

King John. Dulwich Picture Gallery. Source: Wikimedia Commons

By 1202 John had lost his inherited empire in northern France, and consequently held no love for anything French. Therefore in 1206, when Innocent III consecrated a Parisian theology lecturer, Stephen Langton, as Archbishop of Canterbury, John would have none of it. Precedent set the Archbishop as the King’s chosen ecclesiastical representative to the Pope, whereas Innocent saw the Archbishop as his man, his channel of authority over the King. Innocent pushed. John was immovable. Therefore, Innocent invoked the Interdict in 1208 and excommunicated John – who remained intransigent.

Under the Interdict, bishops could not permit church services except for baptisms and penance of the dying. Excluded were celebrations of mass, and all marriage and burial services. The Interdict therefore deprived the people of spiritual consolation, and was intended to make the population hostile to the King. It was a political weapon, and for John it was a declaration of war.

Caught between disobeying either the King or the Pope, many monks and clergy fled the country, but could not escape John’s reach. He confiscated the property of ‘deserters’, and with characteristic cruel humour, had the illicit wives and paramours of supposedly celibate churchmen arrested and expensively ransomed. Indeed, most of John’s measures were economic because he needed money for his struggle to recover lost French lands. Therefore from 1208, John’s main thrust was seizure of abbey and church revenues. Peterborough Abbey was now without income and poor, and West Front construction stopped.

The Interdict accounts for only six years of stoppage to 1214, but its consequences also caused great delay:

1. Medieval stone masons tended to be itinerant, and it would have taken time to re-engage the numbers who had moved on in 1208. 
2. After restoration of estate revenues, the achievement of usable cash flow probably took at least two harvests. 
3. Spanning those early harvests, the trickling revenue was surely too little for an immediate large-scale restart on the West Front, but enough, perhaps, for the new abbot, Robert of Lindsey, to begin his passion to gradually enlarge and glaze 30 church and 14 cloister windows. Thereby, he diverted resources from the West Front, adding significant delay – probably years. 
4. Five abbots spanned the 40 years of West Front construction, doubtless each having his say about design changes, and counter changes – some requiring the dismantling of earlier stonework. Without the Interdict there might have been fewer abbots and fewer redesigns – meaning years saved.

Although the delays consequent upon the Interdict can be reasonably supposed, the total amount of delay can only be conjectured, perhaps 14 years? That would leave a feasible 16 years to complete the West Front. If so, the arithmetic to explain 40 years taken to build the West Front could be:

10 years to the top of the arches + 14 years delay +  16 years of work to complete
= 40 years.

This sum seems reasonable even if, by their vanity and obstinacy (dare I say pride and prejudice?), the King and the Pope were not.

The completed West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

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* Jonathan Foyle’s architectural history, Peterborough Cathedral: A Glimpse of Heaven, is available here: https://www.ticketisland.co.uk/ticketi_slpos_product?bi=PeterboroughCathedral&pid=47.

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

Tales from Tour Guides: 14

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral, written during lockdown.

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Benedict of Peterborough

By Susan Mashford

When I became a Tour Guide, I was disappointed to learn that Abbot Benedict was not the founder of the order whose rules the monastery followed (that Benedict had died some some 120 years earlier), but I was thrilled to discover the benefits that our own Benedict brought to Peterborough.

Stained glass window depicting the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Source: Wikipedia Commons

His abbacy began in 1177 and lasted until his death in 1194. But it was his previous experience which allowed him to make lasting and beneficial changes to the monastery. Benedict was a monk at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Canterbury when Thomas Becket was martyred there, and he was involved with the copying and dissemination of books about the life of the saint. Some historians claim that he was the author of two such books but this is disputed by others. There is no doubt that he was a learned man, with a comprehensive knowledge of the law as well as other disciplines.

He had been Chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Prior of the monastery there, at the heart of Christianity in southern England. In that role he had overseen the rebuilding of the choir after a disastrous fire, along with Master Mason William of Sens, who had built the first cathedral in Europe to employ the pointed arches and slim columns of what would later become known as the Gothic style.

When Henry II appointed Benedict to the abbacy in Peterborough, the position had been vacant for two years since the previous abbot, William of Waterville, had been deposed (more of which below). In that time all the dues had been acquired by the king rather than the monastery. We can imagine Benedict’s dismay on arrival; a half finished church in a greatly indebted monastery, situated on the edge of the watery fens in a tiny settlement entirely at its service, populated by ill-disciplined, leaderless monks. He only lasted a few days before disappearing back to Canterbury without notice and only one monk for company.

Whilst there he clearly made a plan to make the best of his new appointment. He gathered together some relics of Thomas Becket; his shirt, surplice, two vials of blood and some of the floor stones from where he was murdered, and returned with them to Peterborough.

Benedict had two main tasks; to finish the building of the abbey church and to restore order and prosperity to the monastery.

On the first, we could assume that he would want to redesign the plans of the buildings to incorporate the taller and lighter pointed arches and slimmer piers that he had seen installed at Canterbury, and there is evidence in the first bays at clerestory level that that was his intention (see photo on left). There is also evidence in the more foliate designs of some of the capitals at gallery level, that he may have brought with him some masons skilled in those techniques. But a complete change of style did not happen and we can only speculate about the reasons. It may have been that the local masons had no relevant knowledge or experience and new designs would take longer and cost more, but he may equally have taken the decision to preserve the unity of the Romanesque design which we now appreciate so much.

Whatever the reason, Benedict continued the building of the nave in the same style to the west end. There was one significant change of plan; the original position of the west end was abandoned and the nave extended by one bay and the western transept added (where the Shop and Holy Spirit Chapel are now, either side of the main entrance) to allow for a much grander west front. This was probably achieved in Benedict’s time, although there is a difference of opinion and little written evidence to support either view.

The Becket Chapel (now the Cathedral cafe) is what remains of the building containing Becket’s relics

The second task was more complex.  The previous abbot, William of Waterville, had been deposed on trumped up charges, but his chief offence was to borrow money for all his building works without the means to repay it. In the hundred or so years since the Norman Conquest, the abbey’s finances had diminished dramatically, largely because of alienation of the monastery lands to Norman knights. Benedict set about restoring the finances in two very distinct ways; he used the floor stones from the site of Becket’s murder to construct an altar in a specially built chapel in the saint’s memory, which provided an income stream from pilgrims for many generations. He also worked hard to restore lands to the monastery’s tenure by any means possible, both legal and forceful. He was extremely successful in this task, clearing the debt of 1500 marks by the end of his life.

So it is clear that Benedict was both an opportunist (making use of his Becket connections) and a pragmatist (not imposing a new style on the building works). In the north aisle there is a tomb effigy of an unnamed monk which is often attributed to him. The image is of a man who is strong but not arrogant, devout but forceful. It is just the sort of face that I imagine Benedict to have.

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

Tales from Tour Guides: 9

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral, written during lockdown.

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Lady Margaret Beaufort

Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort from St John’s College, Cambridge (Wikipedia Commons)

by Ann Reynolds

The only reference to Lady Margaret that you will see around Peterborough Cathedral is her principal heraldic badge, a portcullis, carved in stone. But she is such an important figure in the development of modern Britain that her tomb is in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the scholar Erasmus.

In Peterborough Cathedral’s New Building, there is a frieze of badges and rebuses at around eye level. The new building was added around 1500 by the Abbot, Robert Kirkton. On the north side, close to the four rebuses that spell out his name, is a portcullis (the grill that closes the entrance to a castle or fort). The portcullis is a rebus (play on words) for Lady Margaret’s family name – Beau-Fort. You can also see her portcullis outside in the Cathedral Precincts, over the gateway to the former deanery.

So, two questions: Why was Lady Margaret so important that she is buried in Westminster Abbey and what has she to do with Peterborough?

Born Lady Margaret Beaufort (of the Lancastrian royal line) she spent much of her childhood near Peterborough, at Maxey Castle. She was married at 13 to Edmund Tudor, who then died leaving her a widow before she reached the age of 14, when in 1457 she gave birth to their only son, Henry.

It is thought that giving birth to Henry at such a young age nearly killed Lady Margaret and, in spite of two further marriages, she bore no further children. She devoted herself to her religion and to learning. All her portraits show her kneeling in prayer, a thin and serious figure. Her son Henry Tudor became the focus of her love and ambition. During his childhood the crown changed hands several times between Yorkists and Lancastrians, with Margaret in and out of favour but always in touch with the political scene. For a time, she sent Henry to France in the care of his uncle, for safety, but she held on to her vision that he would, against the odds, become King of England.

In 1471 Margaret married Thomas Stanley, another politically astute Lancastrian, who with his own army changed sides during the Battle of Bosworth, resulting in the death of Richard III and victory to Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor, who was crowned King Henry VII in 1485. Lady Margaret encouraged the marriage between Henry and Richard’s niece Elizabeth of York, effectively ending the “Wars of the Roses” by uniting the white and red roses of York and Lancaster to create the Tudor dynasty.

Henry was devoted to his mother, now known as “My Lady the King’s Mother”. He gave her the legal right to manage her own affairs with the funds and power to live independently. She settled at Collyweston, near Peterborough, where she built a grand Palace and had responsibility for overseeing the whole region on behalf of the Crown. She had a close relationship with the Abbots of nearby Peterborough.

The extravagant Robert Kirkton (appointed Abbot in 1496) benefited from her favour, because under him the monks’ behaviour had become riotous and wild. Although he gave the Cathedral its “New Building” – the retrochoir with its magnificent fan vaulted ceiling – he also broke the law seriously by hunting in the royal deer forest. Thanks to Lady Margaret’s intercession he escaped severe punishment and created his own deer park, which annoyed the townspeople because he enclosed their common grazing land for this purpose. The entrance to the deer park is to the left as you face the West Front. He decorated the arch with royal heraldic badges including Lady Margaret’s portcullis.

Lady Margaret’s legacy is immense. As well as working politically to end the Wars of the Roses and establishing the Tudor dynasty, she helped promote learning by founding two Cambridge Colleges (see her portcullis over the doorways of St John’s and Christ’s). Her huge intelligence and love of learning were inherited by her grandson Henry VIII who went on to found Christ Church College in Oxford and several grammar schools, including The King’s School in Peterborough.

The four rebuses spelling out the name of Abbott Robert Kirkton, on the north side of the New Building.

We can see her image carved on her tomb in Westminster Abbey and in portraits painted in the years after her death, including one in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

Tales from Tour Guides: 3

Our wonderful volunteer Cathedral Tour Guides are, like all of us, in isolation due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They are not ones to rest on their laurels and have enthusiastically taken up the challenge of writing a series of short blog posts to highlight their personal favourite stories from the Cathedral’s history.

So here they are, published on Wednesdays (about places) and Fridays (about people).

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral.

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The Cathedral’s secret lions

by Kate Brown

What is your favourite part of Peterborough Cathedral? I am very fond of a part that many people may not be familiar with, and that’s the windows formed of medieval stained-glass fragments behind the high altar.

These may be seen from a distance by anyone standing in the eastern half of the Nave, but to appreciate them in detail, you have to take a tower and upper levels tour. On ascending to the triforium (the first floor) and heading round the apse, there are two points of interest: the array of mason’s marks on the stonework and the windows. Stonemasons were illiterate, but each family or workshop had their own mark to ensure that they were paid for each piece produced, and also for quality control. In this area, unlike most of the ground floor, they are not hidden, as few people would see them. The same marks appear at both ends of the Cathedral, showing they were handed down through several generations of workmen, as the building took 120 years to complete.

Peterborough Cathedral’s medieval stained glass seems largely to have survived the dissolution of the monastery (1539–40) only to fall foul of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan soldiers in April 1643. The Parliamentarians were actually on their way to besiege Royalist forces at Crowland, but they could not resist the chance to ‘cleanse’ the building of papist features and idolatrous decoration, to say nothing of acquiring loot to aid their campaign. We are once again indebted to Simon Gunton’s history for a description of the desecration. The soldiers pulled down the stone screen behind the altar, and the pair of organs. They ransacked the choir stalls, encouraged by finding cash, and made a bonfire of books and documents. Statues and carvings (including tombs) were smashed and broken up. Brass candlesticks and memorials were broken up and taken away to be melted down. The stained glass windows in the church and cloisters were smashed.

The building was patched up during the 1650s – some of the money being raised by the sale of stone from the Lady Chapel and the cloisters. In 1742 it was described as “ill kept” – some of the windows had been bricked up and others were still broken. Dean Charles Tarrant collected some of the fragments of broken glass and had them made into the two central east windows in the 1780s. The windows either side of these were then added. The central windows are entirely medieval glass, but the side ones are padded out with later glass to complete them. This is where it is necessary to get a closer view to see just how the designs have been made up. The number of heads do not always match the bodies. Many of the pieces have details painted on them, as originally they were part of an elaborately decorated garment, or in the case of feathers, wings! There are some golden ‘M’s probably from the Lady Chapel (representing Mary).

And so to my lions. In the southern side window, they form the coat of arms of the King of England, quartered with some decidedly disarrayed French fleur de lys as assumed by Henry IV in 1406. Henry IV’s daughters, Blanche and Philippa were born at Peterborough in 1392 and 1394 so there is a strong connection with royalty at this time. Old descriptions tell us that both the Lady Chapel and the cloister windows had images of the kings of England, so the lions could have come from either. What is clear is that the medieval craftsmen have given them individual expressions, which has brought these creatures to life. And that’s why I like them so much. These characters are a direct connection to the minds and creativity of the workers who made them, possibly 600 years ago. I also like the fact that they are patiently watching and guarding everything that goes on in the Cathedral – century by century.

If you would like to meet the lions, when tower tours resume, I or my guiding colleagues will be happy to show them, and the rest of this fascinating building to you. Look out for dates on the ‘Take a tour’ page of the Cathedral website. We hope to see you as soon as possible.

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic Cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

Tales from Tour Guides: 2

Our wonderful volunteer Cathedral Tour Guides are, like all of us, in isolation due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They are not ones to rest on their laurels and have enthusiastically taken up the challenge of writing a series of short blog posts to highlight their personal favourite stories from the Cathedral’s history.

So here they are, published on Wednesdays (about places) and Fridays (about people).

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral.

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St Oswald, King of Northumbria

by Paul Middleton

So what’s he got to do with Peterborough?

If you walk through the Cathedral to stand under the tower and look to your right, you will be looking into the south transept which houses three small side chapels, each with a separate dedication. The first of these is dedicated to St Oswald, King of Northumbria in the years 634-642. A stone watch-tower stands within the chapel itself – a kind of medieval CCTV – once guarding a special object, the right arm of St Oswald!

So what is going on here? 

“May this arm never wither.” Early histories record that Oswald, the much-loved Christian king of Northumbria, generously shared his Easter feast with the poor. So impressed was his chaplain, Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne, that Aidan blessed Oswald’s right arm. Shortly after, the king was killed in battle and his remains brought back to the royal palace at Bamburgh where not only did the arm not wither, but healing miracles came to be recorded by people who came to honour the dead king’s remains. Over time, the arm and its healing powers became a huge draw for pilgrims.

“Build a monastery at Medeshamstede” About the year 654, the local East Midlands king Peada, was seeking a strong dynastic marriage with the most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the day, Northumbria. As a pagan, his suit at the court of the Christian kingdom in the north was at a disadvantage. However, on the promise of making a commitment to the Christian faith, demonstrated by his founding of a new monastery, the marriage contract was sealed. Medeshamstede, the old name of Peterborough, was that monastery and although it is not recorded, it is probable that the monks of Lindisfarne, whose monastery was founded at the initiative of King Oswald, were instrumental in helping with the new royal foundation at Medeshamstede, perhaps even sending monks to establish the rhythm of prayer and worship.

The watch-tower in St Oswald’s Chapel, demonstrated by “Old Scarlett” during one of our family-friendly tours

“Find me a relic to bring in the pilgrims” By the time of the Norman Conquest, the belief in the power of saints’ relics to give healing had created many important centres of pilgrimage throughout Europe. Though rich in property,  Medeshamstede / Peterborough was not one of them. However, with an eye to enhancing the attraction of Peterborough to the pilgrim “trade”, the abbot sent out monks across England and France in search of new relics which could add prestige (and revenues) to the abbey.

One of those monks, Winegot, set off to the north of England, and on his return was able to gift to the abbey the right arm of St Oswald.  Displayed in the abbey church, encased within a jewelled arm-shaped casket, the arm became a major object of pilgrim prayers, no doubt generating significant revenues to add to the wealth of the abbey.

When you visit, look for the watch-tower and the wooden carving of Oswald’s Easter feast. Sadly, the arm and its casket vanished long ago.

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic Cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

Tales from Tour Guides: 1

Our wonderful volunteer Cathedral Tour Guides are, like all of us, in isolation due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They are not ones to rest on their laurels and have enthusiastically taken up the challenge of writing a series of short blog posts to highlight their personal favourite stories from the Cathedral’s history.

So here they are, published on Wednesdays (about places) and Fridays (about people).

Tales from Tour Guides: the stories that fascinate, perplex and inspire the Tour Guides of Peterborough Cathedral.

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The lost Lady Chapel

By Susan Mashford

I have been a visitor to the Cathedral fairly regularly over the last 40 years, and have always wondered at the odd windows in the north presbytery aisle and north transept. Why are they at different heights, why is the surrounding stonework so crudely finished, why are the arches so unrelated to the window openings, why is there only one tall lancet window that matches the three in the south transept? Equally, the masonry and furnishings – what is that funny little door for, why is there obvious infill in the walls below the windows, why were those sections of wall so popular in the late seventeenth century for memorial wall plaques?

Plan of Peterborough Cathedral

The answer to all these questions came as a revelation – there was once another building in that corner which has been demolished! I spent time in the graveyard gazing at the ghostly evidence of the former building. I wandered round the north transept and aisles trying to make sense of what I could see. I studied plans of the Cathedral from different periods of history, all of which showed the location of the Lady Chapel, but without any consistency in the exact layout.

Then I received Simon Gunton’s History of the Church of Peterborough, published in 1686 for Christmas, and his first-hand descriptions of the building before its demolition enabled me to form a picture in my mind.

This is what he says (I have omitted some of his text):

‘As you pass out of this building (The New Building) on the Northside of the Church there was lately a passage into the now demolished Ladies Chappel, in which passage was a little Chappel on the right hand, Archt over with Stone, having a fair East-window, and on the Northside little windows looking into the Ladies Chappel: Over against this, on the left hand, was a little Chappel, but what, or whose, we cannot say.

The Eastern window of this Ladies Chappel was the fairest, and goodliest in all the Church, scarce a fairest in any other Cathedral. It was adorned with painted glass, containing many stories. At the West end of this Chappel were two small Chappels of wooden inclosure, the Northern anciently the Chappel of S. John the Baptist, and near an adjoining pillar was the Chappel of S. James.’

The inventory of the monastic buildings produced at the time of the Reformation (also from Gunton) records that in the ‘Ladies Chappel’ there were splendid decorations and furnishings:

‘An image of Our Lady with reddis Riffey, set in a Tabernacle well gilt, upon Wood, with twelve great Images, and four and thirty small Images of the same work, about the Chappel.

A pair of organs, one desk, and four seats, one Tabernacle of the Trinity, and one other of Our Lady, one Desk, and one old Candlestick of Latten, four Pedecoaths called Tappets’

We know that the ceiling was painted wood because some of it was used to repair the choir stalls which had been destroyed during the rampage of Cromwell’s troops in 1643.

W D Sweeting writes in his 1926 book about The Cathedral Church of Peterborough:

‘The painted boards from the roof were made into backs for the seats in the choir. An engraving of the choir as it appeared in the eighteenth century shews these boards. They are mostly adorned with the letter M surmounted by a crown, and the three lions of England, in alternate lozenges’

Evidence of the Lady Chapel on the north side

So the Lady Chapel, built around the end of the thirteenth century, was large, sumptuous and ornate. It probably had ornamentation of the latest decorated styles that we can still see in the openings behind the high altar into the New Building. It certainly had large glazed windows, probably the same style as the lancet window still in situ in the corner between the two buildings (there is one image of the chapel, an engraving by Daniel King some time after its demolition, which shows this style of window). It was entered through an arched passageway from the north aisle, but there were also arched openings from the north transept. The two chapels at its west end apparently blocked these openings, but there was probably an external door to provide access to non-monastic congregations.

I have the answers to my questions: the arched openings were blocked up hurriedly in the 1650s with infill stonework and windows probably from the ruined cloisters, the new blank walls provided a handy space for local people to add their stories in the new baroque style and the odd window was part of a whole scheme of fashionable fenestration. I only wish that I could see the building in all its glory!

An artist’s impression of the Lady Chapel

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Suggested further reading:
Peterborough Cathedral: A Glimpse of Heaven by Dr Jonathan Foyle (Scala 2018)

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If you are able to make a donation towards the cost of maintaining this beautiful and historic Cathedral, it would help us a great deal. You can do so via the Cathedral’s Virgin Money Giving page. Thank you.

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