APPENDIX VII
AN ANCHORITE’S CELL22
“Soon after the present work was begun a strange hole was discovered in the chancel wall, just at the turn of the apse on the north side. It is about 4 feet high and 20 inches wide. There is no stonework. A roughly rectangular hole has been broken through the flint wall, and the sides of it plastered to something like a smooth face. There is no provision for or mark of a door. And it was difficult to assign any reason for the making of the hole. Yet it was certain that some reason for it had been. Rough as it is, there is enough care bestowed on its making to show that it was not one of the openings sometimes left in the walls of buildings for the convenience of bringing things in during their construction, and blocked up when done with. Besides, it is too small for such a use. It was suggested that it may have been made to bring in a coffin at some funeral. But it is too small for that also: and it needs to be shown why men should have broken through the wall to bring in a coffin when it was much easier to bring it in by a door. Then it was guessed that it might belong to some extinct stove for warming the church; but neither the position nor anything in the form of the hole seemed likely for that use. It is too small to have been the entrance to a vestry, though the position is a proper one; and certainly there must have been a door had that been its purpose. Yet if the hole had ever more than a temporary use, it must have led to some chamber outside, for the church could not have been used if it were open to the weather.
Some further light was thrown on the place a few months ago when a coating of modern cement was stripped off the outside of the wall. Then was found a second hole about the same size as the first, but cut only part way through the wall. It is plastered inside with clay, and was filled up with flints and clay. Rather above these holes, and east and west of them respectively, are two smaller ones, such as may have received the ends of timbers. These also were found stopped with clay. The annexed illustration explains the work better than any description.
It seems that a little wooden hut has been built at some time against the wall of the church. The smaller holes give its length from east to west—about eight feet inside—and perhaps also its greatest height, about six feet. But this last and the width from north to south are uncertain, for there is nothing to show what was the shape of the roof, and if there were ever any foundations they are not to be found now. The walls were probably of stud and clay daubing, and the roof thatch.
The place can hardly have been other than an anker’s den. And it must surely have been one of the least commodious. It is remarkable that so few such have been identified, for the numbers of ankers in England must at one time have been considerable. There is a good deal about them in the second volume of the new edition of Mr. Bloxam’s Gothic Architecture, and Mr. Bloxam would assign to ankers most of the habitable chambers attached to churches, over vestries and porches and elsewhere. Very likely some such were used by ankers of the easier sort: but I think more were occupied by secular clerks and chaplains, and the anker’s place was a hut built outside against the wall, under the eaves of the church, as is said in the thirteenth-century Ancren Riwle, which tells us more about ankers than any other book I know of.
A cell was so placed that the anker need not leave it, either for worship or for any other reason. There was a window opening through which he might join in the worship at the altar, and at times receive the sacrament. And there was another window or hatch to the outside through which necessaries might be received and conversation held with visitors or servants. A window or squint is often found from a chamber over a vestry towards the high altar, and there is sometimes one from a porch chamber: but being on upper floors they could not well have the other window, so I take most of them not to have been ankerholds. Though as the degree of strictness varied much and seems for the most part to have been fixed only by the anker himself, it is possible that some may have been so used. The anker of the strictest sort was inclusus—permanently shut up in his cell which he entered with the license and blessing of the bishop. Such an one could scarcely have inhabited an upper chamber. Whether our Bengeo Anker was inclusus or not is uncertain. The entrance to his cell had no door, but it may have been blocked, and a squint or loop towards the altar formed the blocking. If it were open a curtain must have been hung across it, perhaps a black cloth with a white cross like that ordered in the Riwle to be put to the ‘parlour’ window.
The recess in the church wall west of the doorway is the anker’s seat and perhaps his sleeping place. And his bones may lie below: for it seems to have been a custom for ankers to prepare their own graves within their cells.”