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©R.J.PENHEY2008
Bourne Archive.
The
Photographic Evidence for Dating the Structure of
the Chancel.
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the moment.
The context into which the following evidence fits is
laid out in the article on the Browne
Monument.
Figure 1. Bourne Abbey: north
wall of the chancel: middle bay. The east bay, to the left appears to be late
medieval while the other two are later, probably 1807. Apart from the new work
above it, the old wall is a little thicker than the new. The top of the eastern
buttress too, seems to be of the early nineteenth century, though the lower
stages are repaired medieval work. The eastern buttress is still scarred by
what looks like damage from shot, though the possibility of frost damage has to
be considered. The window matches that on the south front and is consistent
with an early nineteenth century Gothick style. The building to the right houses the
organ and was built in 1869 with its eastern wall simply abutting onto the 1807
buttress. Its unfinished coursed rubble was fashionable in the 1860s.
Figure 2. Bourne Abbey: south
wall of the chancel. The east bay, to the right is late medieval while the
other two are of the 1807 rebuild. The eastern buttress is of a heavier design than
the other and seems to be part of the medieval scheme, though modified. The
roses in the decoration of the eastern end of the cornice are of a single,
pre-Tudor design, which looks as though it once continued along the rest of the
south front but closer inspection shows it to be unfinished. The string courses
and thicknesses of the two phases of work are unrelated. While the eastern
buttress is heavier than the middle one and is of different stone, its style has
influenced the later one.
Figure 3. Bourne Abbey: south
wall of the chancel. The small doorway in the eastern bay. The stick is 36
inches long. The doorway appears to be in the fifteenth century structure but
is of a seventeenth century style. Its insertion has been disguised by ending
the new work in line with an earlier settlement crack. Its sill is a long,
massive and well-founded stone which has stayed in position while the wall
further east has subsided a little. The Portland cement mortar pointing is
later repair along the line of the old crack. The stonework blocking the
doorway is mid-twentieth century; built after the disadvantages of Portland
cement mortar in a limestone building had come to be appreciated.
Figures 4 and 5. With the chancel in a ruined state
and the nave in use, it is clear that the eastern end of the nave was closed
off by a wall which may or may not have included a window. (See Figure 6.
caption.) When the building was actively an abbey, the screen in this position
can be expected to have been in three stages. At the bottom 
would be a pulpitum, a solid wall
across the opening between nave and chancel. It will have been broken only by
two, normally closed doors, one each side of the parish altar in the nave.
These were designed into the general scheme of the building to permit
processions by the canons, around the whole church. Above the pulpitum will
have been a pierced screen, of stone or wood, which obscured the parishioners’
view of the chancel but allowed the sound of the canons’ services out into the
nave. Above this will have been the rood loft. The relevant features of the
building as it stands are consistent with this. The repaired scar left by the
removal of the pulpitum is clear. Above it, each side and even more clearly is
the twelfth century respond of the screen. Above that is plain plaster.
What is
also a fairly safe guess is that the mid-twelfth century heads of the arches
from a blind arcade, which are in two stacks between the font and the south
door, came from the eastern face of the pulpitum. It is barely credible that
they have been lying around since the 1640s but if at this stage, the pulpitum
had been incorporated into the new east wall, and that wall is likely to have
been thrown up with minimal expense, then it is possible to believe that they
were discovered and retained when the new chancel had been newly built.
Figure 6. (thanks to Wikipedia) The three stages of
the chancel screen can be seen as they remain today, in the form of responds on
the north and south walls. The lower stage represents the pulpitum which was
solid apart from a doorway towards each end, so obscuring the parish’s view of
the canons. The second stage, with the
Figure 7. (thanks to the Willoughby Memorial Library) In Moore’s book of 1809, there is
an engraving of the eastern side of the
