Current Archaeology, February/March 1991
What was the impact of the Norman Conquest? Everywhere great barn-like cathedrals, abbeys and churches were erected in place of the cosy clutter of the relic-ridden Anglo-Saxon churches. However at St Gregory's Priory in Canterbury, we can see a different aspect, a religious house founded from scratch which has much to tell us about the ecclesiastical politics of the Normans.
At Canterbury, William the Conqueror installed his friend Lanfranc as Archbishop in 1070. He immediately began rebuilding the cathedral, and by 1087 he had also founded a new church just outside the north gate, which he dedicated to St Gregory.
There were already two great Benedictine monasteries on the north-east side of Canterbury. The earlier was St Augustine's, the first English monastery, founded in 598 (the abbey of SS Peter, Paul & Augustine). However in 990 the cathedral (Christchurch) was also converted into a Benedictine monastery, and by the Norman Conquest, it ranked with Westminster and Glastonbury as one of the three largest and richest Benedictine houses in Britain, with the archbishop as its abbot.
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St Gregory's however was established on a new basis. It was set up as a twin foundation: on one side of Northgate Street was the hospital of St John the Baptist, and on the other side of the road was a house of secular canons to serve the hospital. The hospital is the oldest hospital in England – and it was also one of the largest, with accommodation for 30 men and 30 women. It still survives in use as an almshouse. Masked by the 19th-century almshouses, the 900-year-old ruins of some of the original buildings can still be seen (the drains are currently being excavated) – one of the least known historic complexes in Canterbury.
St Gregory's was given a fine endowment of two saints. St Eadburg (Ethelburga) was acquired from Lyminge and St Mildred was transferred from Minster-in-Thanet, where the abbey had been destroyed by Viking raids. This was to be the cause of friction, for St Augustine's claimed that St Mildred's body had already been given to them by King Canute in 1035. This transfer of Anglo-Saxon saints into a brand new Norman church gives an interesting insight into the 'politics' of Norman England.
The remains of Lanfranc's church were eventually revealed under the west end of the later church, covered by a layer of burning. There were three main features, a central church, with chapels to either side, presumably those of saints Ethelburga and Mildred. The floor levels and wall foundations of the south chapel survived almost intact, though the structure to the north must be inferred from a small section of the gravel foundations.
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Interpretation, however, is controversial, and there are two different versions on offer: that of the site directors, Martin Hicks and his wife Alison, and that of Tim Tatton-Brown, the former director of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust who has been doing the documentary research for this site. The Hickses believe that the church began as a fairly conventional nave and chancel, and that the side chapels were added later – when the church was also extended to the east, following the construction of complementary transepts to north and south. Tim Tatton-Brown, however, believes that the complex was built from the beginning as three separate churches side-by-side, and that the two saints would have been given prominence right from the start. The 'Easter Table' Chronicle (a late addition to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) says the two saints' bodies were translated in 1085 to St Gregory's – i.e. two years before the official foundation charter. On this reckoning, the enlarged nave of the main church and the transepts that linked it to the two chapels would have been a secondary development. Further investigation of the remaining stratigraphy will hopefully determine the correct interpretation in the near future.
On 2 July 1145 the church was burnt down – the chronicler Gervase records the exact date. Following this, Archbishop Theobald (1139-71) built an extensive priory complex over the ruins of Lanfranc's church, using the remains as foundations. By this time the house had become a house of Augustinian canons, and a large church was built, with an aisled nave to the west and choir to the east. Tim Tatton-Brown thinks that the large aisled church was built before the 1145 fire, perhaps in the 1120s, when St Gregory's first became an Augustinian priory.
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It is also worth recording that, from the 12th century at least, many of the archbishop's archives were kept at St Gregory's and that next door was the house of the archdeacon of Canterbury, who in the mid-12th century (1154-63) was Thomas Becket.
A most remarkable feature of the choir were the sounding boxes placed under the floor. These were curious drain-like structures with masonry sides and a peg tile base. They were later additions to the church and are likely to be resonance boxes, installed to accentuate the sound of the choir. A number are known in medieval churches, while sometimes large jars were placed high up in the walls presumably for the same purpose. The channels uncovered at St Gregory's appear to be similar to the resonance boxes discovered at the Whitefriars at Coventry.
The length of the church is unknown as the eastern end continued beyond the excavated area. However if the 'north transept' on the plan is correctly interpreted, it could have been a very long church indeed, up to 300 feet (70 metres) long.
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The extensive priory buildings were also excavated. The heart of an establishment such as this was in many ways the kitchen which provided food not only for the canons themselves, but also for guests. In the west corner was a large bread oven which underwent a complex sequence of adaptions. Below the kitchen floor, at the west end was a sequence of five hearths of pitched tile construction. The thick deposit of charcoal recovered from these revealed the remains of a healthy mixed diet of fresh water fish, mussels, cockles, oysters, chicken and beef.
The largest feature in the kitchen range was the central oven built of limestone blocks, with a work area to the east. The space between the features in the kitchen was minimal, and the heat generated when activity was at its most productive must have made working conditions unbearable.
Beneath the floors of kitchen and refectory was a series of water pipes. The earliest of these contained sections of terracotta piping, later replaced by a lead pipe, fragments of which still survive. This fed water from a network which ran to the east of the priory boundary, bringing fresh spring water from Canterbury Cathedral's own water supply, constructed by Prior Wibert in 1150-1160. The contemporary plans still survive, depicting the first known illustration of the priory.
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The refectory had many sub-phases during its use, and various temporary screens subdivided the hall, the most drastic dating to the 1500s when a wall was inserted converting it into two smaller rooms reflecting the priory's declining status and wealth. Should we perhaps think of the refectory in its final phase not as a single open hall where the canons dined in corporate grandeur but rather as being, in practice, sub-divided into a number of small cosy nooks?
At the centre of the priory was the cloister, the arcade of which had Purbeck marble column bases and capitals. To the excavators' surprise and delight, a number were found lining a post medieval rubbish pit. There was a flint-lined well at the centre of the cloister and benches lined the walls of the inner cloister walk. To the east, an open space was later converted into a smaller secondary cloister.
The chapter house lay between the church and the undercroft of the dormitory. Traces of painted wall plaster were found adorning the east wall and the scars of the prior's stone seat were evident in the surviving plaster. Unusually, however, the remains of only three people, probably priors, were found buried below the floor.
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The first part of the complex to be excavated was the cemetery which lay south of the priory. This served not only the monks and the patients of the hospital, but also the inhabitants of the Northgate area of the city. Many of the small churches within the walls of Canterbury did not have their own burial grounds and therefore burial for many of the inhabitants of Canterbury tended to take place in the cemeteries attached to the major religious houses. In total, 1,251 burials were excavated dating between the 11th and 16th centuries and including men, women and children. Indeed, burials continued on the site for some time after the dissolution of the priory itself.
In the late 14th century, a major rebuilding of the priory took place. This was probably made necessary by the earthquake of 1381 which shook Canterbury and caused major rebuilding everywhere in the city. Buttresses were added to the south of the church while to the north a long continuous buttress was constructed along the length of the nave. The cloister too was substantially rebuilt.
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In the final phase of the priory, two structures were added either side of the west end of the church. That on the north was a gateway/parlour giving access to the cloister, while on the other side was a large bell-tower projecting into the cemetery – between them forming an impressive west end.
By the 16th century, the priory was in decay, spiritually if not physically. A contemporary account recalls that one of the canons, Master Braborne, played dice all night with William Fisher and two servants of Christ Church who were let in by a back gate in Ruttington Lane, Master Braborne lost quite a lot of money, but it appears that this did not disqualify him from becoming prior in 1528. A visitation by Archbishop Warham in 1511 revealed that the precentor was quarrelling with the brethren, there were only six canons – one of them a student at Cambridge – the butler served very bad beer, the precentor did not know how to sing and there was no bell ringer, which gave the brethren an ideal excuse to cut divine service, because they did not know what time it was. The prior, Dr Thomas Welles, was often absent as he held several rectories and vicarages – and was also Bishop of Sidon – i.e. one of the archbishop's suffragan bishops.
In 1537 the house was dissolved. Most of the buildings were demolished, except for the prior's house, which became a private lodging house, leased from the archbishop, with a number of distinguished occupiers including Sir John Boys who lived there from the 1580s to 1623. It was demolished in 1848, and in 1958, the new GPO sorting office was erected on the site. This in its turn has now been demolished and the entire remains are to be removed to make way for an underground carpark.
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