Benedictine monasteries were commonly built in the centre of larger towns and cities. Living cheek by jowl with their surrounding, more secular, community. You could say this was a central part of their pastoral mission. In the situation of smaller Norfolk settlements such as Binham and Wymondham, they performed a secondary role as local parish church.
Medieval Parish Churches and Monasteries were socially stratified spaces. In a Church, the Chancel was for the priest, choir and, at a push dependent on power and status, nobility, whilst the nave was for everyone else, from merchants to peasants. Similarly within a monastery, the Chancel was for educated choir monks, the Nave for uneducated lay brothers. In Binham Priory, the nave was held equally in the possession of the village and the monastery. Which explains why after the Dissolution, both at Wymondham and Binham, the nave was allowed to continue being used as the Parish Church.
In this particular instance Binham Priory's past, is not entirely in ruins. The Nave remains intact, with arcades of dog tooth carved nave arches, clerestory and trifolium. A huge wall of carved stone, one of the glories of English architecture. Displays the transition from solid Norman Romanesque at its base, to the loftiness of Early English architectural elevations at its zenith.
In Norwich and Ely, you can see how former Benedictine monasteries, with a less fatal desecration of their physical and spiritual fabric, could transition relatively easily into being a fully fledged Cathedral. In Binham, with less power, money and population, it's transition was smaller in scale, more of an improvised patchwork repair. You get the feeling the nave of Binham Priory survived by the skin of its teeth, into becoming The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross.
What is left, besides the nave, of the rest of Binham Priory, are low walls, the bare shells of rooms and outlines of cloisters, chapter house, warming rooms, dormitory and refectory spaces. The most substantial remains are the monolithic pillars that once supported the tower, which in their half eaten away form, resemble sculpted ice lollies. Some of Binham's wider monastic ground plan, tantilisingly, is still not excavated. Many of the supportive produce and food processing areas, have yet to be investigated within the monastic boundary.
What we see of the Priory Church today represents a herculean effort, over many generations of Binham locals, to salvage and preserve the nave - for a long long time after the Dissolution's representatives had left. The Kings Comissioners completed their required work of clearing out the monks, removing roofs and lead, taking out windows, removing ritual silver ware. What the people of the parish chose to do with the nave thereafter, was niether in their remit, nor their concern. Unless, of course, Henry 8th or Thomas Cromwell were to make it so.
The locals proceeded to block up the windows and archways, take out the broken limbs of tracery. Insert windows into walls, and quickly bodge together a low replacement roof. Creating a functioning parish church for themselves, initially quite makeshift in appearance. Engravings and paintings from the 18th century, show you Binham Priory, pretty near to what you see now. Though perhaps slightly crumblier around its edges and overgrown with 'picturesque' ivy and buddleia.
Binham Priory, a secondary house of St Albans Abbey, was founded in 1091 by Peter de Valoines. William the Conqueror, as his uncle, gave over the land to him. The Priory received a further royal endowment from Henry 1st in 1104. The De Valoines seem to have remained the patrons and protectors of the Priory right up until the Dissolution in 1539. There was an early charter stipulating that Binham Priory should never contain less than eight choir monks. Presumably because any less would've been considered no longer viable as a religious institution.
The time between 1091 and 1539, is actually a salutary tale of medieval corrupt practices by a sequence of venal Abbots. The sort that forged documents, so they could not be removed from office, whilst their monks subsisted on bran and water drawn from drain pipes. They sold off the Priory silver, wasted money on endless litigation. Plus, the usual scandalous behaviour that often provided the subject matter to fill the borders of medieval illuminated manuscripts. The clerics that Chaucer so rudely parodied.
Richard de Parco 1227-1244, is the only Abbot who appears to have been honourable and diligent in his role as spiritual leader to the Priory. However, persistent financial impropriety over centuries had, in the longer term. a huge consequence in diminishing patronage and monks. So by 1539 there were six monks left and an annual income that had declined to £140.
Inside Binham Priory there are a couple of significant objects to notice. These convey, both a sense of its communal continuity and necessary adaption to changed religious emphases.
There is a fine example of a Perpendicular style 15th century font. Portraying the Seven Sacrements, plus the Baptism of Christ, around its eight panels. That this survives in its original location, demonstrates how much the nave was both at the centre, and at the service, of the local population, well before the monasteries Dissolution.
The other object is a repurposing of the old medieval rood screen, after it was dismantled. Some of the remaining screen panels have been incorporated into a side pew. At some point those panels was painted white, and in gothic calligraphic letters religious verses were inscribed over the top. The seeming triumphe of religious language over religious imagery. However, if you look closely, over time some of the surface paint has worn away and in places medieval faces and decorative guilding are now peeking out. The rich medieval world contained beneath the puritanical bold black text quotations from Cranmer's Bible of 1539.
These artifacts encapsulate something of the essential nature of Binham Priory, salvaged and repaired, yet still bearing all of the scars of that past sacrilege, even as it proudly holds its head high in the present.
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