Tag: Abbey

Cotinus in autumn

Petal doubling makes flowers more showy, but often at the cost of the ‘doubled’ flowers being less interesting to pollinating insects. The additional petals may be modified stamens so less pollen is produced. Compare a wild rose to a garden rose and you’ll see what I mean.

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Image of the day – 180

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click images to enlarge

These autumn leaves are on a purple Cotinus coggygria bush, common name ‘smokebush’. Like many trees and shrubs at this time of year, Cotinus leaves change colour in autumn before falling to the ground. The shrub will produce fresh, new leaves in the spring. But look more closely and you may see something else.

The leaves in the image have developed interveinal patches of necrotic tissue, making the plant even more striking in autumn. I had never noticed this condition before moving to Cirencester, but there’s a Cotinus in the grounds of the Stratton House Hotel and Spa that does this annually. The shrub seems healthy in the spring and summer. For a week or two at the end of October this patterned necrosis makes the autumn leaves look even more spectacular.

Irregularities of this kind are common in both animate and inanimate natural systems and not infrequently appear as deliberate ‘enhancements’. Here are one or two notable examples:

  • Leaf variegation – Gardeners and plant breeders select and propagate from stable variegations. Normally plants with variegation grow more slowly because the efficiency of photosynthesis is compromised.
  • Petal doubling – This make flowers more showy, but often at the cost of the ‘doubled’ flowers being less interesting to pollinating insects. The additional petals may be modified stamens so less pollen is produced. Compare a wild rose to a garden rose and you’ll see what I mean. How often do you see bees working garden roses?
  • Variations in animal characteristics – amongst cats and dogs (and also budgerigars, canaries, parrots and chickens you’ll see size and shape changes as well as behavioural, colour and pattern modifications. Compare a Jack Russell with a retriever or a blue budgie with a green one and you’ll find plenty of differences to ponder.
  • Frost hardiness in plants. Frost sensitive species cannot survive winter in temperate or arctic conditions, so hardiness is a prized feature of many garden plants, and plant breeders pay attention to things like this. A Dahlia or Chrysanthemum that can flower for an extra week or two in the autumn may be worth a higher price, for example.
  • Fruit colour and flavour components. These days strawberries are much larger than when I was child, and they are often red inside, not just on the outer surface.

Many variations of this kind are deliberately selected for by plant and animal breeders.

Certain other changes have been caused deliberately, even in humans. Lower lip enlargement, neck ringing to generate extended neck length, foot binding, and forms of male and female circumcision have been required for a variety of religious and cultural reasons. Hair styling, removal, or transplantation, piercing of ears, noses and other body parts are common, and don’t forget tattooing. And in plants; pruning, clipping, or bonsai are widely employed.

In the world of rock and stone, coloured and uncoloured crystals may be prized as jewels and fetch fantastic prices. I wrote about an example of this, a geode I spotted in an ordinary, traditional, Cotswold dry stone wall.

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Crystalline inclusions in Cotswold stone
A rose in the rain
Is church unbalanced?
A glorious colour contrast
Sculpted tree

Cirencester Abbey

The abbey’s construction was a huge project continuing throughout the 12th century. To fund the ambitious project, Henry I and his successors, Henry II and Richard I, granted the abbey revenues and privileges, such as exemption from tolls, access to commerce, and timber and stone for construction.

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Image of the day – 179

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click images to enlarge

In medieval times there was an Augustinian Abbey in Cirencester. Like so many abbeys and monasteries in the United Kingdom it was dissolved during the reign of King Henry VIII and afterwards demolished. The outline of the walls is marked in the Abbey Grounds with small, square paving slabs, and a few of the column bases are visible too, but that is all that remains above ground where the Abbey once stood. There are some additional carved stones and other items in the Corinium Museum.

The photo shows a Lego model of the Abbey, currently on display in the Parish Church. You can see a Lego tree in the garden within the cloisters, and part of the nave of the Abbey church. The model is complete with its tower although this doesn’t appear in the main photo, but it’s there in the image below.

Construction and history

The Abbey and tower

Some of the political and practical history of the founding and later dissolution of the abbey are well described in blog articles published by the Corinium Museum. These articles, and the Wikipedia article are well worth reading. They are linked below.

Long before the Abbey was built the land where it later stood was part of the Roman City of Corinium Dobunnorum; the River Churn (in those times named Kern, Kerin or Corin) had been divided into two, one part outside the city walls as a defensive feature, the other part within the city as a source of water for drinking, washing, for industry, building and so forth. The Saxons, moving West into the still Romano-British part of what is now South-West England, took control of the area, but had no use for a derelict Roman city. However, there was a Roman church building in the area where the abbey would later be founded, and a Saxon church was built over the Roman church.

Early in the 12th century, King Henry I founded St Mary’s Abbey, building the chancel on the site of the Roman and Saxon churches. About 1130, Abbot Serlo arrived with a community of canons to set up residence .

The abbey’s construction was a massive project continuing throughout the 12th century. To fund the ambitious undertaking, Henry I and his successors, Henry II and Richard I, granted the abbey revenues and privileges, such as exemption from tolls, access to commerce, and timber and stone for construction. Henry II allowed the abbey the revenues and control of the town (or ‘vill’) of Cirencester around 1155, initiating centuries of friction with the local townspeople. The abbey church was consecrated in 1176 in the presence of King Henry II and several bishops, but building work on the cloisters, refectory, dormitories, and the abbot’s house continued for many more years.

The result of all this effort was the most wealthy and influential Augustinian abbey in the Kingdom. The abbey flourished through its ownership of very large estates in the Cotswolds and an important role in the very profitable medieval wool trade.

Dissolution

The townspeople repeatedly asked the Crown to grant them a borough charter, but this was consistently and strongly opposed by the abbots. In the end, Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries ended with the destruction of the abbey and the confiscation of much of its wealth and property. A Royal Commisioner, Robert Southwell arrived in the town on 19th December 1539 to receive the surrender from the last abbot, John Blake. There was no resistance, and the abbot and monks received pensions, but the buildings were torn down and everything of value was sold off.

Religion or faith?

As with so many JHM articles, as I write I am deeply struck by the huge gulf between religion (usually a very worldly affair as in the history of Cirencester Abbey) and faith (with its basis not so much in what we think as in who we are and how we live.) The distinction is essential if we are to live full lives, discovering who Jesus is and why he matters so much.

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Image of the day – 62

In the uneasy relationship between abbey and town, the town had the last laugh when Henry VIII dissolved the abbey.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Click to enlarge

This is the porch of Cirencester’s Parish Church, St John the Baptist. It’s used as the main south entrance into the Church, and the door on the north side is also usually open, but the main West Door is kept closed and bolted. A three storey porch is a rarity, and in fact the two upper floors were once used as the Town Hall. But it seems the porch was built by the nearby Abbey as administrative offices and only attached to the Parish Church after the Abbey was dissolved.

This image shows the front detail, but I’ll post another photo soon showing the entire building. The architecture is interesting, with carved animals both real and imaginary, and niches for statues, now empty.

I think there’s something we can learn from this. There was an uneasy rivalry between the Abbott and the townspeople in medieval times. It’s thought that Cirencester was given a royal charter at one time, but the Abbot got hold of it somehow and destroyed it. Building the administrative centre right in front of the Parish Church makes me wonder about the motives involved in that, as well. Maybe there are other explanations I’m not aware of.

But we should always strive to get on well with those around us. It takes two to argue, but it also takes two to agree and agreement is usually better in the long run. In the uneasy relationship between abbey and town, the town had the last laugh when Henry VIII dissolved the abbey. And the town used the building in the picture and later gave it to the church to be added to the structure as perhaps the grandest church porch in all England!

Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Image of the day – 59

If you could visit the Market Place in 1500 you would struggle to recognise anything other than the Parish Church.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Christmas lights

This is Cirencester Market Place on 5th January 2021, still in its decorated-for-Christmas state. In the 17th century this space was full of buildings and narrow streets. Roughly where the red car stands, imagine an old inn with a street either side, and beyond it two rows of buildings, Butter Row and Butcher’s Row, so three streets at that point. Many old buildings were destroyed in town improvement schemes over the years. If they still existed today they would attract preservation orders.

If you could visit the Market Place in 1500 you would struggle to recognise anything other than the Parish Church. All the fine, Cotswold stone buildings were constructed more recently than that, the shops and dwellings at that time would have been timber framed with overhanging upstairs floors. The entire look and feel of the place would be different. At that time the Abbey was thriving with the Abbey Church behind the existing Parish Church. The entirety of what is now the Abbey Grounds would have been busy with monks on errands and at work in the gardens, at the fishing lake (still there today), in the mill and bakery and so much more. It was almost a walled town within a town.

In the year 1000, shortly before the Norman invasion, some of Saxon Cirencester may still have been outside the old Roman walls, but there was a Saxon church in the area of the Abbey Grounds and it’s likely that other parts of the Roman City would have been cleared and put to use.

And in the year 500 the Romans had left only 100 years earlier. The city would have been more or less intact, but derelict. Initially, Saxon settlers lived outside the old city walls. Some of those walls would still have been standing, at least in places, and the larger buildings inside the city would have been identifiable – the Basilica, the Forum, and probably Baths and a Theatre (now lost). The Saxons built timber framed houses and farms initially outside the walls. Piles of rubble and stone, no doubt ridden with extensive and impenetrable growths of brambles and trees, would have seemed far less useful than the arable land outside the old walls.

Go back another five hundred years and the area where the town now stands consisted of a flood plain with low gravel banks and the River Churn meandering through. There would have been yellow iris, water mint, alder and willow in wetter areas with other trees on higher ground. The waterways would have been easily forded and the local Dobunni people likely fished in the area and farmed on higher ground nearby. The Roman army constructed the Fosse Way from Exeter to Lincoln and built a timber fort in the eastern part of modern Cirencester. It’s likely that a trading settlement grew up near the fort and the town was officially recognised in 75 CE. By the later Roman period it had become the second largest city in Britain (London was the largest).

All of this took place in and around the area we know today as Cirencester Market Place.

Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!