AN ACCOUNT OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
The following is the story of the discovery which, in 1908, caused a good deal of public interest, and provided the archæological world with an object of attention.
Although known to a small circle of friends of the writer and his colleague in the research, and to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, who was intimately acquainted with both, and in touch with them at the time, no publication of the circumstances has yet been made, and this was withheld largely for reasons more or less personal to the writer, though the intention had always been to make known the facts whenever the time should seem ripe for the disclosure.
The entire record has been preserved, and the testimony of both the writer and his friend being available, as well as the contemporary evidence of the Secretary of the S.P.R., it will be seen that the matter stands on a fairly good basis in respect of documentary witness.
For reasons of convenience, initials will be used in the ensuing account. F.B.B. will denote the writer, and J.A. his friend, John Alleyne.
In anticipation of an appointment to the position of Director of Excavations at Glastonbury Abbey on behalf of the Somerset Archæological Society, of which he was a member, F.B.B. had, during 1907, devoted considerable time to the study of the ruins and their history, and to that of the older religious foundations, and in this J.A. assisted him. Most of the surviving accounts of the Abbey were gone through, both the works of the mediæval writers and those of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, with the fragments collected by them from older sources. Among the first, the works of William of Malmesbury, Adam de Domerham, William Wyrcestre, and John of Glaston, were examined, whilst Leland was not overlooked, and the later antiquaries, Hearne, Dugdale, Hollar, and Stukeley, had their share of attention. Following these, Browne-Willis, Britton, Carter, Collinson, Phelps, Kerrich, and Warner, were consulted, and finally some careful attention was bestowed on the modern antiquaries, Parker, Freeman, and last, but not least in importance, Professor Willis, whose Architectural History was the standard book of reference on the subject during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and still remains of the greatest usefulness to students.
Glastonbury Abbey having passed out of private hands into the custody of a body of Trustees, acting on behalf of the National Church, it was hoped that a greatly increased opportunity for research and excavation would ensue. All published plans of the Great Church had been necessarily very incomplete, in the absence of visible remains and the lack of trustworthy evidence from documents. In particular the following features were in doubt:
1. The form of the retro-quire, and eastward termination of the Abbey Church.
2. The question of a north porch to the nave, and its probable position, if it existed.
Retro-quire and Chapels.
In 1866 Professor R. Willis published his invaluable Architectural History, being the substance of a communication he had made to the Archæological Institute in the year previous. He devotes two pages (40, 41) to a discussion of the number and arrangement of the chapels east of the processional path in the retro-quire, and arrives at the conclusion that they were five in number. And in his plan (Fig. 2), which appears as a frontispiece to his work, he shows these five, the central one projecting about 12 feet. On p. 43 he says:
"As Bere is also said to have built Edgar's Chapel at the east end of the church, it is probable that this chapel was one of those that we are considering, and that Bere fitted it up and completed it. The complete eradication of the east wall of the church in the centre may be accounted for by supposing that the central chapel projected eastward, as I have shown in the plan, and that this chapel was Edgar's; for if it had been only one of the ordinary chapels it would not have been worth mentioning as a distinct building."3
Professor Willis's conjecture represents the largest or most liberal interpretation yet placed by any antiquary upon the passage from Leland—which, it may be said, is the only known contemporary evidence of this work of the last two Abbots.
Parker,4 who reviewed the whole subject of the plan in his work for the Somerset Archæological Society (see his article in their Proceedings for 1880), does not support Willis's conclusions, inclining rather to the view that the Edgar Chapel was in the south transept, to the east of the nave, but it is within the writer's knowledge that Professor Freeman believed that the original quire, which, before Monington's addition of a fifth and sixth bay, must have been shorter by some 39 feet, was furnished with a large eastern chapel, probably a Lady-chapel, and that this may have been of quite considerable dimensions and even co-extensive in total length with the plan as given by Willis. But this view does not appear to have gone farther than a mere expression of opinion verbally given at a meeting in the Abbey, and the writer only heard it quoted as a reminiscence some time after the discovery of the Edgar Chapel.
It appears to have been put forward as an explanation of the curious diagram given in Phelps's Somerset, where a plan of the church is published, showing in dotted lines a short projection at the point where Willis shows his chapel, and this is given a semicircular or apsidal end.5 Phelps calls this the "Lady's Chapel." And in the corner of the same sheet this author gives another long rectangular diagram, again with a semicircular end, which Warner, who reproduces the plan, calls the "Chapel according to its original dimensions." The apse being the constant feature, these additional dimensions would be to the west, and would answer to the difference in the former and the latter dimensions of the quire which Monington lengthened in 1344-5. And it will be clear that some such reasoning may have guided Parker or Freeman to the tentative conclusion mentioned, and have assisted Willis to form his definite theory of a slight prominence in the central chapel of the later retro-quire.
Among the documents which have been recovered whose period is that of the immediate post-Reformation, is one which would have been readily accessible to Willis and others, and which is preserved by Phelps and copied by Warner in his Glastonbury, published in the twenties of the last century. This is a transcript of a report made to Queen Elizabeth by a Commissioner, who was sent to make an inventory of the Abbey buildings, and he gives a series of measurements of the principal parts of the monastery, including the Abbey Church, as to which he says:
"The great church in the Aby was in length 594 as followeth:
The Chapter House, in length, 90 foot.
The Quier, in length, 159 foot; in breadth, 75 foot.
The bodie of the Church, in length, 228 foot.
The Joseph's chapell, in length, 117 foot."
In the seventeenth century we have the bare statements of Hollar and of Hearne, that the total length of the Abbey Church was 580 feet.
All the measures given by the Elizabethan Commissioner are very excessive, and perhaps for that reason, as well as for the confusion of idea suggested by the association of the Chapter-House measure with those of the Church, they have been rejected, or not regarded, by modern antiquaries. In like manner the bare statement of Hollar and Hearne, being without any description of what buildings were to be included in their measure, has not been taken into account.
Professor Willis's review of the probabilities of the plan of the east end seemed conclusive as regards the existence of five chapels in a row on the east wall of the retro-quire, for the construction he places upon William Wyrcestre's description must be admitted to be most reasonable, fortified as it is by the record of Wild's plan (1813), in which the bases of two piers with fragments of wall attached and running eastward are shown in precisely the position required as partitions for the forming of the three central chapels of the five.
These piers had evidently been recently discovered, and are figured in Britton's Architectural Antiquaries, vol. iv., p. 195. But all trace of them has been cleared away, and, as Willis himself says (op. cit., p. 42):
"Unfortunately, the practice in respect to these ruins until the beginning of this century and later was always to remove not merely the wrought stones, but also to eradicate the foundations. And although the remains have been for many years protected from this kind of destruction, THERE IS NO HOPE LEFT OF RECOVERING ANY DETAILS OF PLAN BY EXCAVATIONS." (Capitals mine.—F.B.B.)
So the matter remained until, in 1903-4, the Archæological Institute decided to make Glastonbury the scene of its labours, and Mr. (now Sir William) St. John Hope was deputed to prepare a paper for their annual meeting.
Mr. Hope, having in mind such plans as Abbey Dore, where four chapels appear against the east wall of the retro-quire, reviews William Wyrcestre's statement in this light, and places on his words an alternative construction such as would be correct if that writer had been habitually precise in his descriptions. But he is not precise, and a general inspection of his writings will sufficiently show that he has a peculiar method of representing facts where number, series, locality, or dimension are involved. In the present instance he says:
"IN ORIENTALI PARTE ALTARIS GLASTONIE.
"Spacium de le reredes ex parte orientali magne altaris sunt 5 columpnæ seriatim et inter quamlibet columpnam est capella cum altare."
Mr. Hope thought that Wyrcestre counted each respond as a whole column, which would mean three whole columns and two responds or piers engaged with the walls north and south, suggesting, of course, four chapels only. He caused trenches to be cut east and west along the site of his supposed central dividing wall, and one north and south immediately outside the east wall of the retro-quire and across the gap where the central chapel of Willis ought to have been. But nothing turned up which to his mind was indicative of an extension of building beyond the line of the two remaining fragments of walling marking the eastward end of the retro-quire, and his conclusion is definite—that there was not, and could never have been, any such extension of a central chapel. And he claimed to have found support for his view of a mid-partition giving a total of four, and not five, chapels, through the confirmatory results of his excavation. Such was the position in 1907 when the writer commenced his studies, and it will readily be seen that no prospect of success could reasonably be expected to attend further research by excavation beyond this point.
All the evidence was sifted and discussed by F.B.B. and J.A. F.B.B. attached perhaps as little weight to the conflicting records of a longer measure as had those who went before him. But he distinctly preferred Willis's solution to others, as there was no gainsaying the significance of Wild's plan with its two intermediate column-bases. And instinctively he felt, as his friend also felt, that the question was not solved, the last word not said. More than once, the feeling returned that a chapel which was thought worthy of special mention by Leland, and which, according to his account, was the work of two Abbots, must have been a work of some importance.
Still, nothing came uppermost in the mind which would tend to modify the writer's respect for Willis's view, nor, indeed, to challenge its probability. It was rather with the object of defending this view, as against the contradictory one more recently put forward, that the intention was formed to examine, as soon as circumstances might permit, the site of Wild's twin piers, and to dig deep around the spot in the hope of finding yet some trace of footings characteristic of a crypt; for Wild noted these as being "probably part of the crypt," and it did not appear that anyone had taken the trouble to investigate this matter.
Wild's plan, incorporated in Britton's "Antiquities," may be regarded as a standard work. In this respect it claims greater weight than others such as Phelps's or Stukeley's, which are vague and inaccurate. Warner copies Phelps, and claims a fourteenth-century Lady-Chapel at the east, but neither Britton nor Stukeley, whose plan is two hundred years old, supports his view. Warner's note is quoted by Professor Willis (ref. to p. 31 of his Architectural History).