CHURCH LARKING - Old Malton Priory Church

 

One look at its pristine white stoned exterior tells you that this is no ordinary Parish Church. St Mary's refers to itself as a Priory Church, which is a residual nod to its medieval monastic origins. For this was once part of a Gilbertine monastery.  

The Gilbertine's were a Christian monastic institution entirely English in its origins. St Gilbert of Sempringham, once a lowly parish priest, founded it in 1130. The Gilbertines went on to build twenty six monasteries over its four centuries of existence, These were mostly in Lincolnshire, with a smattering across East Anglia and the south and west of England. They were unusual in being frequently double foundations, where both canon monks and nuns were cloistered side by side in a bifurcated monastery. Each keeping a discrete separation. Their churches had a dividing wall built down the middle, so they could worship together, whilst neither side could see the other. And if that sounds weird and messed up to you, well, that's because it truly was.

Double monastic foundations were not unusual in the early eras of Celtic Christianity. Whitby Abbey founded by St Hilda ( 657 - 680 AD ) was during her period as Abbess a double foundation. Five hundred years later, the Gilbertines became widely admired and renowned for both their austerity and the strict discipline of their adherence to the monastic Rule. Nevertheless, at the Dissolution, their institutions faced accusations of lax discipline, rumours of sexual fraternisation, and eloping monks and nuns. Whether any of this held any grain of truth, or was merely a convenient opportunistic slander, is difficult to ascertain at this distance..

Rough outline of Malton Priory

All Gilbertine foundations were dedicated to St Mary. The Priory was built after St Gilberts death, in 1150, when foundations for Canon monks alone were becoming increasingly common  Old Malton Priory was built specifically as a men's training seminary, and a place of respite and recuperation. Most of its standard arrangement of monastic buildings are now totally gone or only exists buried beneath grass at a foundation level. A crypt that once lay beneath the kitchen, still survives in Abbey House next door to the church. The Dissolution reached Old Malton priory in 1539. What we now see still standing, is the sole surviving building of the entire Gilbertine Order in England. It's that rare.

What we find at St Mary's Priory Church, is a severely amputated section of the original Priory's nave. The frontage has lost its twin west tower, both side aisles of the nave have been removed, the arches filled up, the upper clerestory chopped completely off, and the full length of its originally vast nave reduced by two bays. What was once a splendid piece of lofty Perpendicular window tracery and stained glass decorating the Churches frontage, is chopped in half by the low flat roof, its upper mullions blocked up. I mean badly bodged doesn't quite cover what was done here. It's an abhorrent mutilation of its body. That said, when one examines closely the front entrance you can very easily imagine what an impressive statement its exterior originally made. Executed in late Norman Romanesque, with Early English stylistic flourishes, it still possesses an element of light, yet austere elegance. 

As you enter into its interior through its wide arched wooden doorway, and then close that door behind you, you are immediately plunged into the full darkness of the porch. Acting as some sort of transition from the lightness without into the semi-darkness within. For when you step out of the porch into the body of the church, you are immediately struck by what a gloomy atmosphere it exudes. And this is with several insertions of later Victorian windows to allow light in. The medieval light levels in this church must have been terribly low, when only lit by candle light and its single window only at half power even in strong summer daylight. No use at all in a winter evensong.

Judging from the exterior there was once a three light pointed arch window behind the altar, which is now blocked up and concealed behind its gilded canopied reredos. The overall feel of this church's interior is not in any way shape or form an elevating one. Resembling a dingy oppressive cave with little natural light penetrating. It's stiflingly sombre ambience, is one I found not at all uplifting nor happy to stay with for very long. Setting off your nervous imagination, as though some very unpleasant dark resonances are harboured within its damaged walls. Still incensed by what has been perpetrated upon its hallowed ground. This is the sort of architectural travesty that makes you angry at the rank hypocrisy of the English Reformation, and all that it stood so little for.