Binham Priory

 Binham Priory

 

The Benedictines formed the earliest English monastic communities, starting with St Augustine at Canterbury. Rich and influential monasteries flourished in the Middle Ages, not least those attached to the great Cathedrals. Henry VIII brought an abrupt end. Their lands were confiscated and sold; their wealth seized.

 

Benedictines disappeared from Britain for a few centuries, but were allowed to return in the C19, to found various modern communities. Many, if not most of these have specialised in education, of the private sort. Unfortunately, a significant number have in recent years been embroiled in safeguarding scandals. In the late Middle Ages, the charge was corruption of wealth. Now the charge is child abuse. This shadow obscures the fact that the communities have contained many admirable men, not least the late Cardinal Basil Hume, once Abbot of Ampleforth.

 

One Medieval Benedictine community escaped the full force of Henry’s Dissolution. This is Binham Priory in Norfolk. Yes, it was seized and sold off. Yes, the monastic buildings were demolished, and their stones recycled in local houses. Yes, half the great Priory church met the same fate – the end where the monks prayed and sang. But the Nave, the western half, served as the Parish church. This was spared, and stands to this day, with same parochial function.

 

For the visitor, the effect is disconcerting. In a beautiful village setting stands a church, of reasonably large size. Its western end has the tracery of one of the greatest medieval windows (so it is proudly claimed).

But its Eastern end is a high flat wall. Outside the wall are the impressive ruins of the rest of the Priory Church.

 

It is as if the stern half of the Titanic had been sealed off by a vast bulkhead, and continued to sail, whilst the bow end alone had disappeared, smashed to bits by icebergs…

The ruins of the monastic buildings well give the sense of the whole structures they once supported, especially the monks’ cloister.

There is a forlorn High Altar, once standing supreme at the Priory Church’s Eastern end, whose nearest congregation these days is a bunch of indifferent cows.

 

There’s a nagging sense that the proportions of the surviving church aren’t quite right, even given its guillotining. The sides seem to demand some supporting structures. Indeed, that is what they once had. Internally and externally, the church was wider, with North and South aisles, somewhat lower than the central nave. The aisles were demolished, mostly in the general C16 ruin, and the side rebricked with Tudor windows.

 

Much of the external boundary wall survives. In medieval times, most settlements of any consequence were walled and gated. The remains of Binham’s impressive gatehouse is still the entrance to the site.

 

As Romanticism lay hold of artists and writers from the late C18, Binham’s hybrid state of surviving church standing among the wider ruins of its earlier pomp attracted interest. A panel in the Church details several studies.

 

In the C20, John Piper, great modern decorator of churches, most notably Coventry Cathedral, painted views of the church. But one might be forgiven for mistaking an exhibit of a collage of stained glass as his design. It is not. It is a reconstruction of two panels of vivid medieval glasswork, found in the Priory ruins.

 

December 2021