Hyde Abbey
Encyclopedia
Winchester
Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...
, Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It was dissolved and demolished in 1538.
At the time Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
refounded the royal city of Winchester about 880 AD, the Saxon cathedral and the royal palace
Palace
A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word itself is derived from the Latin name Palātium, for Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome. In many parts of Europe, the...
stood at the heart of the city. As the city grew, land was purchased in the city in the last year of Alfred's reign, and work was begun on the New Minster
New Minster, Winchester
The New Minster, Winchester was a royal Benedictine abbey founded in 901 in Winchester in the English county of Hampshire.Alfred the Great had intended to build the monastery, but only got around to buying the land. His son, Edward the Elder, finished the project according to Alfred's wishes, with...
, beside the Old Minster, under the direction of Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex...
; when it was sufficiently complete, about 903, it was consecrated and fully endowed, the abbot Grimbald (died 8 July 901), a learned monk of St. Bertin at St. Omer in Flanders, was instated and the body of Alfred was reinterred in the new structure. Several further members of the royal house were also interred in the New Minster. The gift in 1041 by Queen Emma
Emma of Normandy
Emma , was a daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, by his second wife Gunnora. She was Queen consort of England twice, by successive marriages: first as second wife to Æthelred the Unready of England ; and then second wife to Cnut the Great of Denmark...
, widow of Cnut, of the head of Saint Valentine
Saint Valentine
Saint Valentine is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. The name "Valentine", derived from valens , was popular in Late Antiquity...
was cherished as one of the most valuable possessions of the now-reformed Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...
house.
In 1109 Henry I
Henry I of England
Henry I was the fourth son of William I of England. He succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100 and defeated his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, to become Duke of Normandy in 1106...
ordered the New Minster to be removed to the suburb of Hyde Mead, to the north of the city walls, just outside the gate; when the new abbey church of Hyde was consecrated in 1110, the bodies of Alfred, his wife Ealhswith
Ealhswith
Ealhswith or Ealswitha was the daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. She was married in 868 to Alfred the Great, before he became king of Wessex. In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen. -Life:Ealswith was the...
, and his son Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex...
were carried in state through Winchester to be interred once more before the high altar. Their royal presence made Hyde Abbey a popular pilgrimage destination.
In 1141 the church suffered damage when Winchester was burned during The Anarchy
The Anarchy
The Anarchy or The Nineteen-Year Winter was a period of English history during the reign of King Stephen, which was characterised by civil war and unsettled government...
between supporters of King Stephen and Matilda
Empress Matilda
Empress Matilda , also known as Matilda of England or Maude, was the daughter and heir of King Henry I of England. Matilda and her younger brother, William Adelin, were the only legitimate children of King Henry to survive to adulthood...
, and it had to be substantially rebuilt. Henceforward the abbey prospered and acquired considerable land in the area, until it was dissolved in 1539 by Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
and the surviving monks pensioned. The buildings were rapidly disassembled for their building materials and anything else of value. Lucky survivors from the lost library are the cartulary (conserved in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
), the late-13th or early-14th century breviary
Breviary
A breviary is a liturgical book of the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church containing the public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office...
and the Liber vitae, the book of the men and women this Benedictine community remembered in prayer. Today all that remains is the gatehouse that commanded the entrance between inner and outer precincts of the Abbey, an arch that used to span the abbey millstream and the church built for use of pilgrims and lay-brothers (now the nave and chancel of St Bathololmew's Parish Church).
In the nineteenth century John Mellor, a local antiquary, carried out excavations on the site and claimed to have found the remains of King Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
, whose crypt had been ransacked for valuables and whose bones were reburied outside St. Bartholomew's church, Hyde, in a simple grave.
In 1999 further archeological excavations took place The archeological notes record that:
The 1999 excavations consisted of four trenches designed to gain as much information as possible about the east end of the Abbey Church. ...
Two phases of construction were identified. The church, as built in 1110, was constructed of flint and chalk rubble bonded by a pale brown chalky mortar. ...
The choir was defined by the arcade that separated the body of the church from the surrounding ambulatory. ...
Pilgrims, visiting shrines and chapels located at the east end of the church, would have walked along the ambulatory alongside the choir. One such chapel, projecting from the south side of the church, consisted of a small rectangular room with an apsidal east end. Part of a second chapel, of similar plan, was identified to the north of the church.
The original east end of the 1110 church consisted of a small chapel that had been rebuilt in the late 12th or early 13th century using a pale, honey coloured, fine-grained limestone bonded by a hard orange mortar.
The stratigraphic sequence suggests that the original chapel was standing while the new structure was built. It was demolished on completion of the work, possibly to limit the interruption to services. The date of construction is uncertain, but it may be associated with the programme spurred on by the 'miraculous events' that occurred at the shrine of St. Barnabas in 1182.
....Directly in front of the high altar was a group of deep intercutting pits that represent past attempts to find the tomb of Alfred the Great. At the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539, graves in front of the high altar are said to have produced small lead tablets bearing the names Alfred and Edward. No archaeological trace of this first recorded breaching has survived, but subsequent discoveries suggest that the graves were left intact. Within a year the church and cloisters were demolished and the site of the church was lost from the landscape. However, late 18th century maps show that the site was littered with mounds of rubble....
A few years after the event, the site was visited by Captain Howard, a noted antiquarian, who was aware of the discoveries made by Henry VIII's Commissioners. He interviewed Mr Page, the Prison Warden, who told him that during works in the Governor's garden the of site of high altar was found, with three graves located before it.
The coffin thought to be Alfred's was made of a single block of stone encased with lead. He was also told of its fate - the prisoners threw the bones about, broke up the coffin and sold the lead. Then the original grave pit was dug deeper to the level of the watertable, and the broken coffin reburied.
The earliest pit in the area accords well with Page's description. It extended across the full width of the high altar area and had been dug down to the watertable.... Slight hints of earlier cuts were found that might represent the three royal tombs.
Abbey Property
The Abbey owned land in Collingbourne KingstonCollingbourne Kingston
Collingbourne Kingston is a village and civil parish about south of the market town of Marlborough in Wiltshire, England. It is one of several villages on the River Bourne, which is a seasonal river usually dry in summer....
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, which was originally called Collingbourne Abbots due to the link with Hyde Abbey.