Chapter IV: The Vanished Cloisters

There is little now to be seen of the old Priory spoken of by Leland.

Approached from the hamlet, the existing Priory Church of Little Dunmow, with its roof of staring blue slates, its factory chimney-like bell tower and mean walling, attracts attention only by its oddity. But when one walks up the farm land from which the south side of the building may be viewed, one receives a different impression. In the architecture now seen there are the

lines where beauty lingers,

the lines which tell of a splendid structure. The remains of no common building stand in solitary domination of these quiet corn fields.

One enters the church and is surprised, as Mr. Hartley has written, by that

indefinable feeling which ever strikes us on our entry into a spacious and beautiful edifice. That the building is a fragment of what must have been a structure of extreme beauty becomes evident. Columns of such dimensions and arches of such design were never intended for purpose so slight as the support of the present roof; windows of such size and elegance were made for shedding light upon a much more spacious interior than we now find.

But when account is taken of all the stately arches and columns, and the beautifully cut ornament thereon, now embodied in the brick rubble and plaster which we owe to Georgian and Early Victorian dulness and parsimony, no more of the old Priory survives for our refreshment than the south aisle of the choir. The stones of the structure that were hewn and raised by some "Master Henry" or "Master Hubert the Mason," the timbers that some "Master John the Carpenter" industriously wrought, even the marble and alabaster which crowned the work have long been torn away. They are come upon now, in fragments in the walls and floors and roofs of cottages and barns which adjoin the church.

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SCENE AT THE MODERN CEREMONY.--The Trial Proceeding. Judge in the Middle. Tow pairs of claimants on either side. Counsel for the claimants speaking; counsel for the Bacon seated. Jury of maidens and bachelors on extreme right. Highly entertained public in front at 1_s._ a head.

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PROCESSION AFTER THE MODERN CEREMONY.--Two couples in chairs, recent imitations of the original in the Priory Church. The Bacon is swinging from poles behind the second couple.

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Where the monastic building once extended nothing remains but the out of sight foundations which try the patience of the digger of land drains. Labourers' patches of potatoes and greens range over consecrated ground. The fishponds of the monks, to which they had recourse "on Fridays when they fasted," grow grass or bear the burden of a railway embankment. Tradition and propinquity, but these only, point to venerable cottages and a farmhouse as marking the position of the Priory's Manor house and Grange.

Of memorials of the Flitch ceremony two are shown--the oaken seat, in which successful applicants for the Bacon were chaired, and the stones on which they knelt.

The chair is kept within the altar rails. Two persons could no doubt be squeezed into it. There are holes in the chair through which the bearers' poles went.

Whether the chair belonged originally to the Prior and was actually used when he gave away the Flitch, or was the property of one of the Lords of the Manor, who, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, continued the custom, has been disputed. But there is evidence pointing to the chair having been employed on the occasion of the Manorial awards only. Mr. F. Roe, in his _Old Oak Furniture_, though he attributes the chair to the thirteenth century, doubts very much whether it can have been used from the beginning for the ritual of the Flitch. For this reason--

The outer right-hand side of the chair is carved with wheel-like decorations, but on the left-hand side the surface of the wood is plain, and various mortices are visible, which show that the seat is part of a larger structure, being, in fact, the end unit of a series of stalls. The truth is that the chair used by merry-makers at the ceremony of the Flitch, is actually a waif from the conventual establishment. It is, one is bound to admit, a remarkable coincidence that the chair and ceremony should have had their origin in the same reign, but the fact that it is only part of some fitted furniture, precludes the possibility of it having been designed for the purpose for which it was used in later years.

In the accounts available of the awarding of the Flitch after the closing of the religious houses by Henry VIII we hear of "two great stones near the Church door" on which the applicant for the Bacon had to kneel. Whether they are still in existence is uncertain.

What are to-day pointed out as the stones on which the Pilgrims knelt may possibly be the bases of two of the many columns which local vandals in want of building material have demolished. They are certainly not "sharp," as some chroniclers describe the stones to have been. A pair of stones like those in the Church are to be seen in Little Dunmow village.

In Hone's _Table Book_, published about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria, it is said that "the two great stones" were then in the Church. But whether the writer of this statement had actually seen them for himself does not appear. It may perhaps be mentioned that, as the first presentations of the Bacon were made seemingly not to wedded pairs but to husbands only, there could not be at this early stage of the history of the Custom any need for "two" stones. The present stones are each only about half a foot in diameter and the right distance apart for one person to kneel on them. They could hardly be described as "great" stones.