Beauchief Abbey

[Bayleaf]

This article first appeared in the Transactions of The Hunter Archaeological Society and is reproduced by kind permission of the Society

THE DISCOVERIES AT BEAUCHIEF

BY S. O. ADDY, M.A.

BEFORE saying a few words on this subject I must, as President of this Society, express our thanks to Mr. Crawshaw, the owner of Beauchief Abbey, for his generosity not only in allowing the site of this once splendid place to be excavated, but in bearing the whole expense. And to Mr. Elgar, who has come into Sheffield from a distant county, and to his boys, I must also offer our thanks and congratulations.

It must have been a keen pleasure to him, to Mr. Crawshaw, and the boys to see so many interesting things brought, one by one, to light. It is already proved that the buildings of the abbey were as noble as those of other abbeys of this famous order, such as Dryburgh, where Sir Walter Scott is buried. At Dryburgh much of the remains still exist, and from them we can form a vivid idea of what Beauchief was. I regret that I have not seen the excavations myself, and my remarks will be confined to one point.

But before going on I should like to say a word or two about the name Beauchief. It is of course of French origin, but the present pronunciation is right, and it is mere affectation to pronounce it like modern French.

It is not generally known that there are two Beauchiefs in England. One of them is in Sussex, near Eastbourne. As Joseph Hunter in one of his notes has told us, there was a rabbit warren near Beauchief in the manor of Eastbourne in 1421. Again, in 1509, I have noticed in the State Papers (No: 297) mention of a district called La Beauchieff near Pevensey, which adjoins Eastbourne. Remember that chef is masculine.

At Eastbourne the name is only preserved in the lofty cliff now called Beachy Head, which is a shortened form of Beauchief Head. Etymologists, knowing nothing of local history, have told us that the word means "beautiful promontory." It is, however, the name of a district, not of a promontory. It is the name of some beautiful country which abuts on the promontory. The land adjoining this great cliff, with its lovely surroundings and its variety of colours has been described in glowing terms by Richard Jefferies.

So Beauchief, near Sheffield, can hardly mean "beautiful hill"; it stands in a valley, and the words "beautiful hill" do not describe the site. Just as, in our time, people call their houses by fanciful names, or label them after their birthplaces, so the founders of the abbey may have followed the same instinct.

I now come to the point. Among other things which Mr. Elgar's discoveries have elucidated is the building between the church and the chapter-house, which he rightly calls the chantry. There were eight chantry priests at Beauchief, and they seem to have had nothing to do with the affairs of the monastery.

Mr. Elgar's plan reveals a building of great length in proportion to its breadth, with a high altar at its east end. It suggests one of those long churches, of which many examples exist, which were divided between a body of monks and a body of parishioners. In other words, there would seem to have been a monastic church at one end and a parochial church at the other. In such cases the two parts were usually separated from each other by a dead wall, which may have been of stone or of wood and plaster. But at Beauchief there was no parish, and there could not have been a parish church without a parish.

Why there should have been so large a number of chantry priests - and these were secular priests - whose chief duty was to say masses for the repose of the dead, it is not easy to say. Most parish churches had one or two chantry priests, but eight is a great number.

At Beauchief, says Dr. Pegge, there "was a chantry of eight priests, but by whom founded, and for whose benefit is not known; and whether these supernumerary priests resided within the house is equally uncertain; but one would suppose not".[1]

His authority was a statement of the Abbot of Welbeck made at a visitation of the abbey in 1472. The abbot then found "in the church a certain chantry of eight priests not duly served (minus debite observatam)."

Since Pegge's time many other documents have been discovered, and I referred to one of them in a book on the abbey written forty-seven years ago. In 1347 Sir Thomas de Chaworth, who lived in Nottinghamshire, made his will. Therein he gave his soul to God and St. Mary, and his body to be buried in the church of St. Mary of Beauchief, before the altar, near the tomb of Thomas his grandfather. And, after giving certain legacies, he said "I give to the eight chaplains celebrating for my soul and for the souls of my ancestors and benefactors four score marks, each of them taking four marks a year."

This was a usual salary for a chaplain or chantry priest at this period. Afterwards he desires that the debts owing to the Abbot and Convent of Beauchief under the Will of his Lord of Chaworth, namely forty pounds of silver, shall be paid to the said Abbot without objection being made. And then he appoints as his executors Sir Thomas his son and heir, Brother Robert de Radclive, Abbot of Beauchief, and three others[2]

It is not absolutely certain that these eight chaplains were identical with the eight chantry priests at Beauchief, but there is very little doubt that they were. We must bear in mind that the Chaworths were co-founders of the abbey, and were great benefactors to it. More-over, they were buried there.

Though the distinction is often forgotten, it need hardly be said that there was a very great difference between a regular and a secular priest. At Beauchief the canons were regular priests; they were dead to the world; had nothing but a few shillings to call their own, and could not make wills.

Not so the secular priest, who lived in the world, could hold property, and make his will like other people. When the Bishop of St: Asaph visited the abbey in 1491, he charged the regular brethren that none of them should secretly hold for himself more than twenty-one shillings yearly, "lest they who do otherwise should be accounted among the rich, and be damned with Judas the betrayer, who, whilst he sought for gain, came to a halter." These men tried to follow the New Testament literally: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Pegge, as we have seen, says that the chantry priests were super¬numerary. They did not sit in the choir with the regular priests, and must have occupied a separate part of the church.

If ever there was a secular part of the church, it must have been chiefly at the west end, where the remains of the tower and the present chapel now are. When the King sold the buildings of the abbey to Sir Nicholas Strelley in 1537, he could not have sold more than the monastery possessed; he could not have sold any parochial or secular building, even though it had been under the same roof as the monastery. That such was the practice at the dissolution of monasteries is well known.

Thus at Dorchester, near Oxford, where the church is of great length in proportion to its breadth, only the monastic part of the building was offered for sale. But a neighbour bought it, and gave it to the parish. At Beauchief there was no parish, as there was at Dronfield, which could receive and hold the monastic part of the building. The fine chancel at Dronfield, which belonged to Beauchief, had a narrow escape from being sold.

As we have seen, Sir Thomas de Chaworth speaks of the church of St. Mary of Beauchief, which was the older name. In the eleventh century there was a parish church of St. Mary in Lincoln Minster; and the Minster was a divided possession between the chapter and a body of parishioners. Parish churches in cathedrals were not infrequent, and were always a bone of contention between the parishioners and the chapter, who generally managed to get the parishioners out, or find another place for them.

Normally the monastery at Beauchief consisted of an abbot and twelve canons. But the full number was not always kept up, and some of the canons officiated as vicars of churches, such as Norton, appropriated to the monastery.

We have to consider:-

1. The great length of the church as compared to its breadth.

2.The existence of a class of chantry priests (who were seculars) therein about equal in number to the canons usually resident.

3. The existence of a chantry, and the preservation from destruc¬tion of the extreme west of the church, and its subsequent use as a chapel in which divine service was held, and baptisms, &c., were registered.

Whether these facts tend to show that the monastery had been engrafted on an older secular foundation it would be rash at present to say.

[1] Historical Account of Beauchief Abbey, Pegge, p.50 TG'SE.

[2]Test. Ebor. I. P.47

[madannie77]

The work by Pegge referenced above is available to download from Google Books:

Historical Account of Beauchief Abbey, by Samuel Pegge

Another work by S O Addy, Historical Memorials of Beauchief Abbey can be downloaded from the Internet Archive.

[Ponytail]

Beauchief Abbey

Mary Walton and Rosamund Meredith 1975

 

https://beauchiefabbey.org.uk

 

[southside]

On 03/01/2011 at 10:29, madannie77 said:

The work by Pegge referenced above is available to download from Google Books:

 

Historical Account of Beauchief Abbey, by Samuel Pegge

 

Another work by S O Addy, Historical Memorials of Beauchief Abbey can be downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Samuel Pegge download from Google Books

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/An_historical_account_of_Beauchief_abbey/OXxbAAAAQAAJ?hl=en