On Saturday I took my mother to an Open Garden event at Whalley (Lancashire, northwest England).
For those not familiar with this peculiar British custom, Open Gardens are private gardens which open for charity on a particular weekend; your fee goes to the charity and you get to wander around places you would not be able to access normally.
Since my mother is 84, as she never ceases to remind me, we chose Whalley centre as the places there are close together - there were a few more a short drive away but we never got there as she was exhausted quite quickly. So the first stop was the Catholic church of English Martyrs. I’ve seen the church from the outside before but it has not been open, though the gardens are accessible.
The church itself is an unremarkable small red brick building, with the usual post Vatican II re-ordering. It’s quite bland as a result. It’s funny how you change; at one time I would have found the cream, blank walls and absence of an elaborate altar reredos calming. Now I find it dull and irreligious.
However, what this church does have, to my surprise, is a 14th century statue of the Virgin Mary. I had no idea. It was found in the river nearby, most likely originating in the Cistercian abbey next door. The face was damaged so has been reconstructed to stabilise it (described delicately as “a somewhat unsuccessful attempt”!), but the rest is original. I like to imagine the monks singing the Salve Regina around this statue after Compline.
The most unusual thing about the Catholic church here is that it owns a bit of the old abbey. Here is a picture of one of the gardens; notice the medieval building in the background. This is the old lay-brothers’ dormitory though it was only finished in the 15th century and by that time, most lay-brothers had disappeared so it may have been used as a guesthouse upstairs, storage below.
What is special about this building is that it is the only monastic building in Britain to have survived and been used continually, from when it was finished in 1415 before the Reformation until today. It was never ruined, though it is somewhat run-down and could do with a bit of care - see the boarded up windows which I think are designed to keep the birds out.
I was able to get around the other side of it, which I wouldn’t normally - this is effectively the back garden of the presbytery. It has a couple of original doors, which led into the cloister (only one in this image).
You can see the position of the roof trusses and supports for the large cloister roof. This cloister was very wide - here it is on the opposite side, with the choir monks’ dormitory on the left.
And here is the southern end of the cloister, towards the lay-brothers’ building; the main door is just round the corner on the right. You can just see the lavatorium on the left, where the monks would have washed their hands before the Divine Office.
The gardens of Whalley Abbey were our next stop, and I gave my mother a tour of the ruins.
The church is almost completely destroyed, apart from a section of nave wall abutting the cloister. There were never more than 30 monks here, so it is quite small. This photo is taken from the wall behind the high altar, looking down the nave. You can see the lay-brothers’ dormitory at the end, and a section of cloister wall on the left.
Another unique feature of this site is the choir pits. These large spaces under the choir stalls were designed to enhance the acoustics of the singing monks. They are unique in Britain in their size, though similar things do exist on a smaller scale; at Cartmel priory, for example, there are holes under the stalls which seem to do a similar thing.
What is also unusual here is that although the church building is almost completely gone, we do still have the original pre-Reformation choir stalls, with their remarkable carved misericords, which stood above these pits. They are now in the parish church next door. I will cover these in more detail in another post for paid subscribers, but here is a preview.
Only one section of the nave wall still stands; here it is on the left, almost but not quite running up to the lay-brothers’ dormitory. Where the white hydrangeas are on the right is the approximate area of the entrance to the church for lay people.
The gardens at Whalley are pleasant to walk round but I noticed something I hadn’t seen before; here is the lavatory building (notice the door high in the wall, which was the entrance to the toilet). At the bottom, presumably utilising the somewhat fertile soil built up by the monks’ waste over many years, they have created or curated (it’s probably partly natural) a rather lovely damp garden. Very creative.
While the Catholic church owns part of the site, the Anglican church owns the rest, including the main gatehouse, which, to my eyes, contains the original doors from the monastery.
So to the parish church next door.
I have previously covered the 1000 year old crosses outside here. Inside are a few survivals of the pre-Reformation church. Though I have visited this church before, I noticed a couple more things this time; I identified the former location of the rood beam above the screen, and then spotted this isolated bit of screen in front of some seating.
It caught my eye because of the slight curve in the wood of the top beam; more recent carpenters would never use a piece of wood this curved. So this was part of a medieval screen, as can be seen by the panelling beneath. Then I noticed the hole in one of the panels. I suspect this is a spy hole, for someone to look through during the Mass. Clearly this serves no purpose where it is now; I think this section was probably once high in the air, in the rood loft - the curved wood would not matter if it was largely hidden from public view. Someone kneeling up there had a hole to see the actions below, perhaps so that they could ring a church bell at the appropriate time.
My favourite bit of Whalley is this side chapel in the south aisle. I visit a lot of medieval churches and most of them no longer have any screens in the aisles. This is what all those chapels would have looked like - this screen is pre-Reformation and while the altar is much later, the layout is very medieval. There is a door to this chapel which is invisible here, but it is an enclosed space when locked.
An interesting afternoon, with some lovely flowers and planting.
The Catholic church garden was undoubtedly the best.
I hope you have enjoyed my little tour.
What a lovely tour, especially the detail concerning the ruins!
Wonderful as always. As an American I sometimes lament that I cannot visit these medieval sites like you have in England, but living around medieval Catholic buildings which are either in ruins or appropriated by Anglicans might be worse than not having them at all.
If I may ask, have you ever visited St. Birinus Catholic Church in Dorchester-upon-Thames? I've watched videos of their Masses on YouTube and it is one of the most beautiful churches I have seen. I especially love the rood screen.