Netley Abbey

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Ruins of the south transept at Netley Abbey.

"Ruin's of Netly Abby" as shown on Isaac Taylor's one inch map of Hampshire, 1759

View of south transept with presbytery (right) and the east range (left), from the south-east

East presbytery window

From the choir looking east

The crossing and south transept. The doors to the sacristy, library and dormitory (half-way up the wall) can be seen in the transept wall. The entrance to the cloister is visible on the right

Facade of the reredorter, with the windows of the Tudor long gallery on the left

Netley Abbey was a Cistercian abbey founded in 1239, by Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester from 1205–1238. The abbey was one of a pair, the other being La Clarté-Dieu in Saint-Paterne-Racan, France, which the bishop conceived as a memorial to himself. Des Roches had begun purchasing the lands for Netley's initial endowment about 1236, but he died before the project was finished and the foundation was completed by his executors. According to the Chronicle of Waverley Abbey, the first monks arrived to settle the site on 25 July 1239 from neighbouring Beaulieu Abbey, a year after the bishop's death. The death of the founder before the vital task of collecting the endowment was complete meant that the abbey started its life in a difficult financial situation. It is thought that little building took place on the site until the house was taken under the wing of Henry III who became interested in the abbey in the mid 1240s and eventually assumed the role of patron in 1251.

[edit] The Abbey buildings

The fruits of royal patronage were soon shown in the erection of a large church (72m long) built in the fashionable French-influenced gothic style pioneered by Henry's masons at Westminster Abbey. The high quality and eleborate nature of the decoration of the church, particularly the mouldings and tracery, indicate a move away from the deliberate austerity of early Cistercian churches towards the grandeur appropriate to a secular cathedral. Construction of the church took many decades and the building was only completely finished by around 1320.

South of the church stood a cloister surrounded by ranges of buildings on three sides, the church forming the fourth. The cloister was the heart of the abbey and it was here that the inhabitants spent most of their time — when not in church — engaged in study and the creation of illuminated manuscripts. The monks' desks or carrells were placed in the north walk of the cloister, there was also a cupboard for books in use carved into the transept wall.

The east range, which was started at the same time as the church and probably finished by 1300, contained many important rooms. On the ground floor adjacent to the church stood the vaulted library and sacristy. South of this was the chapter house where the monks met daily to transact business and the government of the abbey took place. It was a magnificent apartment divided into three aisles with vaults springing from four columns; a stone bench ran around the walls for the monks to sit on with abbot's throne placed in the centre of the east wall. The chapter house is entered from the cloister by an elaborately moulded arched doorway flanked on each side by a window of similar size, the windows had sills and columns of Purbeck Marble, the whole forming an impressive composition appropriate to the second most important space in the abbey after the church. The parlour, where monks could talk without disturbing the silence of the cloister, lies south, it is an austere, barrel vaulted room little more than a passageway through the building. South of this runs a long vaulted hall with a row of pillars supporting the roof and fireplaces (in defiance of Cistercian doctine). This room was subdivided and saw various uses over the life of the abbey. Initially, it may have served as the monks' day room and accommodation for novices, but as time went on it was converted into the misericord where the monks - initially the sick but by the later middle ages the whole convent - could eat meat dishes not normally allowed in the main dining hall.

Crosswise at the south end of this space lies another vaulted hall under the reredorter or latrine. It is equipped with a large 13th century hooded fireplace and has its own garderobe. It is not clear what this chamber was used for, but it may have been the monastic infirmary, if so it was a most unusual arrangement. Normally, an infirmary with its own kitchens, chapel and ancillary buildings around a second cloister would have been located east of the main buildings but at Netley these seem to be absent and excavations have not, as yet, solved the mystery of where Netley's infirmary was. However, a 2005 soil resistivity survey conducted by the University of Southampton has shown evidence of what may be a range of mediaeval buildings between the abbot's house and the main building that may be the missing infirmary (see external links below). A room standing west of the reredorter was the buttery, where the monks' wine (some of it direct from the king's cellars) and beer were stored. Excavations in this area have revealed fragmentary remains that may be part of the separate meat kitchen for the infirmary, if it was indeed in the vault under the reredorter, and the misericord.

The top floor of the east range held the monks' dormitory or dorter, a long hall running the length of the building. This was entered by two staircases, one, the day stair, going down into the cloister, the other, known as the night stair, leading into the south transept of the church to allow the monks to easily get to choir for services at night. When first built, the dorter would have been open, with the monks' beds placed in rows along the walls, one under each of the small windows, and large wardrobes for robes and sandals. Later, when views of the necessity of sleeping together for the common life changed, the dorter at Netley would have been divided, probably with panelled walls, to give each monk his own private room leading off a corridor. At the north end of the dorter was the treasury, a tiny vaulted room, probably placed here so the brothers could guard it at night. A door also led south from the dorter to the reredorter, a large room with stalls. The privies were flushed by an underground stream running in a tunnel beneath the abbey.

The south range was heavily altered during the Tudor rebuilding of the abbey and only the north wall remains, making the tracing the mediaeval arrangements difficult. Going east to west, first came the day stair, then the warming house where the communal fire burned constantly to allow the monks to warm themselves after long hours of study in the unheated cloister. The room was probably vaulted and had its great fireplace on the west wall to allow heat to go to the frater or dining hall next door as well. It is likely that as at Fountains Abbey that above the warming house was the muniment room, where the abbeys charters and title deeds, as well as those of local lords, were kept. This would have been the driest place in the abbey and such a plan was common.

The frater projected south from the range. It has been completely demolished save for the north wall, though the foundations survive underground. It was a long hall probably with a dias for the abbot and important guests at the south end. There was a pulpit in the wall to allow someone to read to the monks while they ate in silence. The kitchen lies west, it had a central fireplace, as was Cistercian custom, and was placed to allow food to be served through hatches both to the monks' frater and the separate dining hall of the lay brothers on the other side. THe food prepared here consisted of bread, vegetable dishes and fish.

The west range at Netley is small and does not run the full length of the west side of the cloister. It is divided in two by the original main entrance to the abbey, with the outer parlour where the monks could meet visitors. North of this on the ground floor were cellars for food storage, while to the south was the frater of the lay brothers. The upper floor, reached by a stair from the cloister, was the dormitory for the lay brothers. Netley was a late foundation, built at a time when the lay brothers were a declining part of the monastic economy and it is likely that they were always few in number, hence the small size of the accommodation needed for them. When the west range was completed in the 14th century they were rapidly disappearing and had all but vanished by the 15th century. At Netley this resulted in the space formerly used by them in the west range being converted into a series of comfortable chambers, most likely for the use of monastic officials or guests.

All the buildings around the cloister were probably finished by the middle of the fourteenth century. There were subsequently few major structural changes during the monastic period aside from the revaulting of the south transept of the church at the end of the fifteenth century. It is likely, however, that there were many internal changes to match rising standards of living during the later Middle Ages that have left no evidence on the surviving remains.

East of the main complex stood a stone building with vaulted chambers on two levels. This is thought to have been the abbot's house, or possibly a guest house.

The central core of the monastery was surrounded by a precinct containing an outer (public) courtyard and inner (private) court, gardens, barns, guesthouses, stables, the home farm and industrial buildings. The site was defended by a high bank and moat (part of which remains east of the abbey) and entrance was strictly controlled by an outer and inner gatehouse.

Netley's fresh water supply was brought by two aqueducts running for several miles east and west of the abbey up into the area of modern Southampton and Eastleigh. The remains of the eastern one, now known as Tickleford Gully, can be seen in Wentworth Gardens, Southampton.

[edit] Crisis and recovery

Henry III added generously to the endowment left by Peter des Roches both in terms of farmland, urban property in Southampton and elsewhere, and various spiritual revenues from churches, with the result that by 1291 taxation returns show that the abbey had a clear revenue of £81, a comfortable income. However, shortly after this, a period of bad management meant that the abbey accrued substantial debts and soon was in a position of near bankruptcy. In 1328 the government was forced to appoint an administrator, John of Mere, to solve the crisis. Despite forcing the abbot to apply the revenues to debt repayment and selling off many of the estates, he was only partly successful, as is shown by the fact that 10 years later the abbey was again appealing to the king for help with a disastrous financial situation. The monks blamed their problems on the cost of providing hospitality to the many travellers by sea and the king's sailors who landed at the abbey. The king provided some small grants and the abbey managed to ride through its difficulties, but the sale of much of the property meant that income levels never recovered and it settled into what might be best described as genteel poverty.

Despite this, Netley remained a much respected institution by its neighbours until the end of its life as a monastery. It was known neither for scholarship, wealth or particular fervour, but was highly regarded for generosity to travellers and sailors and for the devout lives led by its monks. The abbot was summoned on many occasions to sit in Parliament with fellow prelates in the House of Lords as one of the Lords Spiritual, and surviving reports evidence a peaceful and scandal-free domestic life.

[edit] Dissolution

In 1535 the abbey's income was assessed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances, at £160 gross, £100 net, which meant the following year that it came under the terms of the first Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Abbot Thomas Stevens and his seven monks were forced to surrender their house to the king in 1536 and it finally closed in February 1537.

In addition to the monks there were also living in the abbey at the closure 29 servants and officials plus two Franciscan friars who had been sent there by the king, presumably for opposing his religious policies. Of the monks themselves, Abbot Thomas and six of his monks (the other desired to resign and take a job as a secular priest) crossed the Southampton Water to join the abbey of Beaulieu until it itself was dissolved in 1538. Stevens became abbot of Beaulieu before the end and was thus forced to surrender an abbey twice. The monks received pensions after the fall of Beaulieu, while Abbot Thomas ended his days as treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral. He died in 1550.

Following the Dissolution, the king granted the abbey buildings and some of its estates to Sir William Paulet, his Lord Treasurer and subsequently Marquess of Winchester. As soon as he took over, Paulet started the process of turning the abbey into a palace suitable for one of the most important politicians in England. He converted the nave of the church into his great hall and kitchens, the transepts became a series of luxurious apartments for his personal use while the presbytery became a private chapel. The monks' dormitory became the long gallery of the mansion and the latrine block became a series of grand chambers. He demolished the south range and frater and built a new one with a turreted gatehouse to provide the appropriate seigneurial emphasis needed for a classic Tudor courtyard house. He likewise demolished the cloister walks to make a central courtyard for his house and placed a large fountain in the centre. The buildings of the precinct were swept away to create formal gardens.

[edit] Later history

Paulet's successors, who included both his own family and others such as William Seymour, 1st Marquess of Hertford, who lived there during the Commonwealth, and the Earl of Huntingdon, inhabited the abbey until the close of the seventeenth century when it came into the hands of Sir Berkeley Lucy, who decided in 1704 to realise the by now unfashionable house for cash from the materials.

He made an agreement with a Southampton builder, Mr Walter Taylor, to demolish the former church. However, during the course of the demolition, the contractor was killed by the fall of tracery from the west window of the church and the scheme was fortunately halted. Rubble from this collapse was visible on the site as late as 1890. After that the abbey was abandoned and allowed to decay. In the 1760s Mr Thomas Lee Drummer, a country gentleman, purchased the north transept which he removed to his estate of Cranbury Park near Winchester where it can be still be seen as a folly in the gardens. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the abbey, by now roofless and enshrouded in trees and ivy, had become a famous ruin that attracted the attention of artists, dramatists and poets. In the nineteenth century, Netley became a popular tourist attraction and steps were taken to conserve the ruins. Archaeological excavations directed by Charles Pink took place in 1860. Eventually the abbey was taken into state care in 1922 and it is now a scheduled ancient monument.

[edit] The Abbey today

The visitor today will find the shell of the church and monastic buildings around the cloister plus the abbot's house. Little of the post-Dissolution mansion remains aside from the south range, foundations, alterations to the mediaeval structure in red Tudor brick and traces of the formal gardens. In most places the abbey stands to close to its original height. The sacristy/library, the south transept chapels, the treasury, the reredorter undercroft and the lower floor of the abbot's house still have their vaults intact. Mediaeval heraldic polychrome tiles found on the site can be seen in the sacristy, and Henry III's foundation stone inscribed in Latin "H:di.gra rex ange" ("Henry by the grace of God King of the English") remains in the church. The abbey ruins are set in quiet parkland to the west of the village of Netley. The abbey is maintained by English Heritage, and is open free to visitors all year round.

[edit] Netley in literature and art

It was not long after the abbey had been allowed to fall to ruin that it began to attract the attention of artists and writers. In 1755, the antiquarian Horace Walpole praised the ruins in his letters following a visit with the poet Thomas Gray, claiming they were "In short, not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise". In 1764, George Keate wrote The Ruins of Netley Abbey, A poem, which showed a romantic appreciation of the ruins and evoked sympathy for the life formerly led there by the monks. He prefaced his poem with a heartfelt plea for the preservation of the remains.

Keate was followed by other romantic poets including William Sotheby (Ode, Netley Abbey, Midnight, 1790). Sotheby’s view of the abbey was gothic: he peoples the ruins with spectral processions and ghostly Cistercians. Nor was he the only one; in 1795 Richard Warner wrote a potboiler entitled Netley Abbey, a Gothic Story in two volumes, featuring skullduggery at the abbey during the middle ages. Dark deeds before the dissolution also appeared in the section of Richard Harris Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends (1847) covering Netley. This complex satire pokes fun at the mediaeval church and the monks (whom he accuses of having walled up an erring nun in one of the vaults and thereby ensuring God’s revenge upon them) and the tourists that crowded contemporary Netley, while at the same time showing appreciation of the beauty of the ruins.

Netley also has its own opera, Netley Abbey, an Operatic Farce, by William Pearce, which was first shown in 1794 at Covent Garden.

The abbey ruins also attracted the attention of artists. The first surviving depiction of the abbey is by the engravers Samuel & Nathaniel Buck, who specialised in landmarks and great ruins. Their engraving (1733) shows the church of the abbey very much as it is today with the exception of the high vault of the south transept still being present (the picture must be taken with caution, however, as it shows some notable errors, it was clearly done from memory and rough sketches). The abbey was a popular subject for engravers and painters throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most famous artist to paint the ruins was John Constable, whose 1833 painting of the ruins shows them lurking sinisterly among trees. Architects, too, have been inspired by Netley — St. Andrew's Cathedral, Singapore is said to be have been partially based on the abbey church; certainly the nave arcades there strongly resemble the surviving arcade at Netley.

[edit] Folklore and ghosts

Over the years a number of different legends have grown up around Netley Abbey. It has its share of the tales of gold and jewels hidden by the monks at the Dissolution that are common to many ruined monastic sites in Britain. However, there is unlikely to be any hoard awaiting a finder. As a poor house, the abbey never had much in the way of treasure and what there was, church plate worth £43, was all accounted for and confiscated by the king's commissioners. There is also the usual story of secret passages. Netley does in fact have a mediaeval tunnel running under the site, but it is the main drain of the abbey (a stream flows through it) rather than a secret entrance. This tunnel, which is visible beneath the reredorter and via an access hatch on the surface east of the main building, is the probable inspiration of the story.

A more interesting tale concerns Walter Taylor, the builder contracted to pull down the church. Legend has it that before starting work he was warned in a dream that he would be punished if he committed the sacriliege of damaging the building. The tale is recounted by the 18th century antiquary Browne Walters:

He ignored the warning and, as noted above, was killed by the collapse of the west window of the church. Folklore has it that his ghost is sometimes encountered in the ruins, manifesting itself either as a white figure or the sound of falling masonry.

The abbey is alleged to be home to two other ghosts as well. The first is that of a monk, said to be a former abbot who, as the story goes, committed many misdeeds. He is said to appear as a dark figure or a large moving shadow. The second ghost is believed to be that of an old lady; no one knows why she is there but it is said that she can be seen at night floating between the rooms. It is claimed that all three ghosts appear by both day and night.

The story of the nun walled up in a small room recounted in the section in Barham's Ingoldsby Legends was a creation of the author and has no basis in fact or genuine folklore, as the author himself admits with a smile in his notes to the poem, attributing his story to a taxi driver.

[edit] Bibliography and references

• Abbeys and Priories in England and Wales, Bryan Little, Batsford 1979
• The Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England, Colin Platt, Secker & Warburg 1984
• Bare Ruined Choirs, David Knowles, Cambridge University Press 1959
• The Cistercian Abbeys of Britain, ed David Robinson, Batsford 1998
• A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume II, The Victoria County History 1973
• Netley Abbey, A. Hamilton Thompson, Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1953
• Picturesque England, its landmarks and historic haunts as described in lay and legend, Laura Valentine, F. Warne and Co. 1891
• The Pleasure of Ruins, Rose Macaulay, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1953
• Southampton City Council Historic Environment Record - Scheduled Monuments in Southampton, Southampton City Council 2007

[edit] External links

• Text of the the Victoria County History entry on Netley
• Netley on the Sheffield University Cistercian abbeys site
• Some information about the abbey ruins.
• Some information regarding the ghosts of the Abbey.
• 2005 soil survey project by the University of Southampton revealing important new information about the site including the possible existence of a second cloister
• Online version of Laura Valentine's Picturesque England with information about the abbey and engravings
• Photographs and Description