12 Medieval urban religious houses

Lawrence Butler

Any consideration of the role of religious houses in urban

life must approach a problem that is limited in both time and
space. Although the limits are fixed within manageable
bounds, the topic is one of an infinite variety that changes
from town to town, from century to century and from
institution to institution, These three factors form the
variables against which the architectural and archaeological
pattern must be measured and from which the academic
solutions must be drawn.
This survey should be an assessment of the results so far
gained in the past 30 years of urban excavation, a diagnosis
of the limitations imposed by the archaeological method,
and an estimate of the potential for future profitable avenues
of research. There has not been a thorough survey of urban
religious houses in Britain, largely because the subject is a
vast one but also because the definition of towns is fluid,
depending on whether legal or functional criteria are used.
However, it is not necessary to quibble about the inclusion
of those towns at the lower margins of urban status. The
general pattern is clear and is remarkably even throughout
the country, reflecting the domination of southern England
in wealth and other economic resources.
Far less even is the distribution of monasteries between
the orders. Before the Norman Conquest of England there
were only two categories of religious life; foundations were
either monasteries of the Benedictine rule or were secular
colleges. Sixty Benedictine houses survived the Norman
Conquest; the majority were for monks but twelve were for
nuns. Forty of these monasteries may be considered urban,
being founded either in or adjacent to a Roman town (Bath,
Canterbury, Chichester, Gloucester, St Albans, Winchester,
Worcester), or being the nucleus around which a town grew
or was planted (eg Abingdon, Amesbury, Evesham,
Malmesbury, Shaftesbury, Tewkesbury). There were forty
secular colleges in urban locations; nine were founded in
Roman towns (Chester (2), Cirencester, Dorchester, Dover,
Exeter, Leicester, London, York and also Wroxeter), a few
were in towns that may be regarded as Anglo-Saxon burhs
(Bedford, Derby, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Tamworth, Warwick). A few were in towns that owed their
prominence to the college (Beverley, Ripon, Southwell), to
the bishopric (Crediton, Durham, Lichfield, Wells) or to
economic factors (Taunton). In a few cases there are
multiple foundations of colleges in one town (Shrewsbury
(4), Chester, Derby and Hereford (each 2)); it is a matter of
discussion how this fact is to be interpreted.
With the Norman Conquest of England there was a steady
acceleration of monastic foundation by the Benedictines,
reaching a peak of 350 houses two centuries after the first
invasion by the reformed houses (Fig 76). Over 200 houses
were urban, though this description covers a variety of types
and situations. The greatest variation lies in the mainstream
of the Benedictine movement (50 large abbeys (40 urban);
50 medium-sized houses (21 urban); 50 lesser priories (18
urban); 78 alien cells- 10 urban). Apart from Reading and
York St Marys, all the wealthiest abbeys were of Anglo167

Link to previous section

Saxon foundation. Some post-Conquest foundations were at

existing towns, such as Norwich and Colchester, or within
the newly built castles, as at Hereford and Dover. Others
capitalized on older traditions as at Leominster and Whitby,
and a few stood on entirely new sites as at Selby, Battle and
Great Malvern.
A similar pattern is to be observed among the Benedictine
priories, though fewer were on pre-Conquest sites. Among
the minor houses there is a close correlation between castle,
priory and plantation town, particularly in Wales (eight
foundations) where the ecclesiastical support of the
Normans by their kinsmen consolidated the conquest in the
south. The nine alien houses dependent on mother houses
in France were suppressed in or soon after 1414 (Andover,
Arundel, Clare, Dunwich, Hinckley, Lancaster, Newent,
Ware, Wareham). They were either converted into colleges
with little alteration to their structures, eg Arundel, Clare,
or were granted to a college, presumably suffering a
diminution of their domestic buildings (Andover, Newent),
or else were granted to a newly founded Carthusian or
Bridgettine house (eg Lancaster, Ware) in which case communal life ceased. The fifteen Cluniac houses (more than
one-third of the total foundations in Britain) represent a
significant contribution to urban monasticism. Apart from
the refounded Much Wenlock they were new post-Norman
establishments in or near major towns. Some were within
the defended area or close to it (Derby St James, Exeter St
James, Northampton St Andrew), but the majority because
of their extensive land requirements were on the nearest
level, suitable site outside the town and the baronial
founders castle (as at Castle Acre, Dudley, Lewes,
Pontefract, Thetford, St Clears). In general they were rich
houses with substantial possessions in both town and
country and with magnificent buildings dominating the
landscape.
The minor Benedictine communities in the families of
Tiron, Grandmont and Fontevrault preferred rural sites,
and the reformed order of Cteaux aggressively sought the
solitude of the rural wastes. Only the cell at Scarborough,
set in Cluniac fashion between castle and town, and the late
foundation of St Mary Graces near the Tower of London do
not conform to this pattern of isolation; a few houses such
as Coggeshall and Neath were in sight of a modest town.
The Carthusians as a hermit order also required rural
locations, but later founders, perhaps influenced by the
Carmelites, endowed urban houses. One-third of English
houses were urban (London, 1371; Hull, 1377; Coventry,
1381) all on the fringes of the town (also a projected
foundation at Exeter, 1331).
The orders of canons possessed a maximum of 300 houses
in England and Wales. The houses of the major family, the
Augustinians or Black Canons, showed the same variety as
is evidenced by the Black Monks. There were between 45
and 50 urban houses; a few such as Christchurch, Cirencester, Hexham and Gloucester St Oswalds were preConquest foundations, the majority were founded in the

168

Butler: Medieval urban religious houses

Fig 76 Map on Coventry showing extent of monastic sites, based on Speed 1612 (Hobley 1970)
early 12th century. A quarter of the urban houses were the
dominant religious institution of the town, as at Bridlington,
Carlisle, Cirencester, Dunstable, Guisborough, Leicester or
Worksop; some were prominent houses among a multitude
of religious houses and parish churches, such as Bristol St
Augustines, Colchester St Botolphs and Oxford St
Frideswides. Others, s u c h a s T h e t f o r d , W i g m o r e a n d
Royston were minor houses or such as Haltemprice belied
their name. The suburban or peripheral location at Bristol,
Colchester, Haverfordwest and the London houses of St
Bartholomew and Holy Trinity Aldgate was also matched
by similar evidence from the predominantly hospital
ventures of the canons of Holy Sepulchre at Nottingham,
Stamford and Warwick.
Another feature of the urban houses is the outpost
foundation: Southwark beyond London Bridge, Barnwell
beyond the fields of Cambridge, Osney to the west of Oxford
and Llanthony Secunda a safe shelter to the south of
Gloucester. Of the other orders of canons the Premonstratensians had only one urban house, Alnwick, on the
valley floor west of the town and castle; the Bonhommes had
only one modest urban foundation at Ruthin in north-east
Wales. The Gilbertines had seven houses in England,
fulfilling a variety of functions: a retreat-house at Old
Malton, houses of study in Cambridge and Stamford, houses

adjacent to nunneries at York and Lincoln and houses of

canons at Hitchin and Marlborough. The Trinitarians had
five urban houses of varied character but possessing in
common the principal need of ministering to the poor
(Herrford, Knaresborough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Oxford,
Totnes).
Houses of nuns reflected the same variations seen in the
houses of monks and canons, though with fewer urban bases
and more impoverished circumstances. Out of approximately 150 houses of nuns only 25 may be considered to be
urban: these included many different categories: (a) the
wealthy pre-Conquest foundations of Amesbury, Romsey,
Wilton and Shaftesbury where the abbey was the initiator
of the town; (b) Nunnaminster at Winchester, part of a
remarkable religious enclave; (c) major post-Conquest
houses within the town at Nuneaton and Usk; (d) the greater
number of small houses on the fringes of the town, at
Cambridge, Chester, Derby, Norwich, Stamford and York;
and (e) a few larger houses in the fields such as Derby Kings
Mead, Northampton de la Pr, Polsloe near Exeter, St
Mary de Pr near St Albans and Godstow near Oxford.
Apart from the Gilbertine canons already mentioned at
nunneries in Lincoln and York, the Cistercian nuns had a
small house at Whistones in the northern suburb of
Worcester and the Augustinians had a small nunnery in

Butler: Medieval urban religious houses

Bristol and two larger convents in London at Clerkenwell
and at Halliwell, Shoreditch. For all these both the situation
and the size of the house are pointers to the urban prosperity, either to the steady increase in gifts or to the main
property holding.
Within Scotland there are similar trends, but urbanism
was a more fragile institution, particularly outside the
Forth-Clyde basin, Fife and the Firth of Tay. There is no
evidence that monastic foundations before 1124 had any
formative influence upon urban growth. The communities
serving the cathedrals at Brechin, Dunkeld, Dunblane and
St Andrews may have fostered urban tendencies at those
locations, but the evidence is obscure. The Benedictine
abbeys at Dunfermline, Paisley, Arbroath and Kelso and the
Augustinian abbey at Jedburgh are 12th century foundations which generated urban growth upon a pattern well
illustrated in England as at Evesham, Ely or Selby. The
Cistercians, both monks and nuns, were not averse to
burghal settlement near their houses as at Coupar in Angus,
Culross in Fife and Melrose in Roxburghshire. The later
foundations of the Trinitarians (Berwick and Dunbar,
1240-8; Aberdeen, pre-1274; Peebles pre-1296) and of the
Carthusians (Perth, 1429) followed a pattern already
observed in England.
The friars were the urban order par excellence. All four
orders sought the towns-the Franciscans and Dominicans
with an aggressive fervour, the Carmelites after an initial
reluctance, and the Augustinians with a more modest
approach (Fig 77). The potential for archaeological study
had already been assessed (Reynolds 1977, 51, 63; Butler
1984) and need not be rehearsed in detail.
The Templars had urban houses at London, Dover,
Dunwich and Warwick; the first three passed to the
Hospitallers after 1312 and this order held their own houses
at Beverley, Lincoln and London, St Johns Clerkenwell.
Apart from the houses at London and Dover they are
unlikely to be as informative archaeologically as the rural
preceptories.
Hospitals were a common medieval urban phenomenon;
before the Black Death there were some 650 in England and
Wales, and after that catastrophe there were a maximum of
550, many of new foundation. Each town with a vigorous
economic life could expect to maintain 3 or 4 foundations,
in some cases the local abbey or house of canons also acted
as a hospital and so the number was relatively low. In a
ranking of towns there are clear divisions with London (23)
and York (24) well ahead of Norwich (17), Bristol (15),
Newcastle (14) Hull (12), Exeter (11) and Beverley (10).
Slightly lower are Hereford (9), Bury St Edmunds (7),
Thetford and Canterbury (7). Eight towns had six hospitals
(eg Coventry, Scarborough) and nine towns had five (eg
Durham, Newark-on-Trent, Cambridge and Winchelsea).
The conclusion to be drawn from such spontaneous
generosity is the existence of a vigorous economic life which
could sustain a continuous flow of alms and could nourish
new foundations through rents and property.
The arrival of the friars in Scotland and the character of
their growth parallels that already seen south of the Border
except for the absence of the Augustinian friars and for the
notable growth of the Franciscan Observants with nine
houses founded between 1455 and 1505, many with the
encouragement of James IV. One can use the occurrence of
houses of two or three orders of friars and the frequency of

169

hospitals as a barometer of urban strength. Such a guide

identifies the vigorous political, ecclesiastical and academic
centres most clearly: Edinburgh (19 institutions), Aberdeen
(15), St Andrews and Berwick (11 each), Perth (10), Stirling
and Dumfries (7 each), Dundee, Elgin, Glasgow and
Haddington (6).
In general the archaeological approach has been sitespecific, concerned with the location and plan of a particular
house and with the recovery of a destroyed design in order
to assess its architectural achievement. Important though
that aspect is, the size of sample that monasteries and other
urban religious houses present enables the researcher to
pose far wider questions of a social and economic nature.
Where the monastery is an isolated institution within a
town, is the house responding to specific needs, expectations
or functions, such as medical care, support of the deserving
poor, accommodation for the traveller, provision of religious
drama, or does the monastery stimulate those needs by its
very presence? Where the monasteries are numerous, is
there a perceived hierarchy of status with competition for
the support of the masses in terms of gifts and in performance of miracles? Does the competition only exist in fully
developed urban centres with economic maturity and social
rivalry reflected in guild organizations as well as in the
religious field? If urbanization is distinguished by the
promotion of inequality within its walls and by the creation
of a state of tension between rival classes for political leadership, there should then be in the multiplicity of religious
provision the same inequalities and rivalries and a similar
trend to protectionism whether it be in the appropriation of
sacraments and revenues or in the promotion of special
pilgrim offers to boost prestige and esteem. This could be
explored at Walsingham, Ely, Gloucester, Glastonbury or
Bury St Edmunds.
The economic aspects of monastic success may be
measured in the ability an abbey displays in excluding its
rivals from land-holding in a town or region, as in Durham
or Evesham. Where the abbey does not fear rivals it may
enlist the support of other institutions to provide or supplement functions it cannot itself fully perform, as at
Walsingham with the incoming Franciscan friars or at
Pontefract with the Dominicans. In the case of the friars and
of the hospitals the urban community must show not only
the ability to attract religious settlers but also possess the
capacity to sustain a steady growth of donations. The
metropolitan character of London, York and Canterbury
and the regional dominance of Norwich, Bristol, Aberdeen
and Newcastle (Fig 78) are evident in the dense concentration and varied nature of their institutions.
The political aspects of monastic domination can be
assessed in the ability of the abbey to dictate the urban form
and to determine its legal privileges in order to establish the
spatial translation of an approved type of society able to coexist alongside the monastery (Beresford & St Joseph 1979,
183-4, 215-7; Bond 1973, 44-9; Parrington & Balkwill
1975). The outcome of this political dominance or precedence would have been marked by the ability of the
monastery to secure unconditionally its needs for space
whether for worship, for domestic life or for agrarian
desmesne at the expense of frustrating the urban requirements. It is the ecological importance of the physical
structure (whether the city is the major phenomenon and the
monastery the minor unit, or whether the roles are reversed)

170

Butler: Medieval urban religious houses

Fig 77 Map of Britain showing distribution of friaries founded before 1250 (Butler 1984)

Butler: Medieval urban religious houses

171

Fig 78 Map of Newcastle-upon-Tyne showing extent of religious institutions (Miss B Harbottle)

that enables the political aspect to be gauged. This should
indicate how successful the monastery has been in attaining
its perceived land needs and in securing an optimum
location, whether the criterion is solitude, visibility or
accessibility. The creation of an ideal society within the
monastery (Seguy 1971) may be reflected in the external
arrangements. The archaeological investigation will show
how the abbey is sited in relation to the town and whether
its individual buildings are in any way constrained.
The investigation of religious houses is greatly aided by
the mass of documentary record, both of a chronological
narrative type and of land-holding deeds or financial
accounts. However this wealth of evidence is unevenly
distributed across the country and for many small houses
little more is known than their probable date of foundation,
their income at two specific dates and the circumstances of
their dissolution. It therefore follows that the information

about their physical conditions and their relationship to the

urban fabric must come principally from archaeological
research. In a few cases this information will contribute to
an understanding of a type of site or a period of occupation
not previously examined (eg the English monasteries of the
10th century reform movement, the Scottish urban houses
of the Trinitarians). In rather more cases there will be
information on the peripheral monastic buildings which do
not normally survive (eg Waltham Abbey grange, hall and
forge (Fig 79): Huggins 1970, 1972, 1973, 1976; Coventry
mill: Hobley 1967-70). However, for most towns it is the
importance of the religious houses, individually or collectively, in the physical, economic and social structure of the
town that will be the major contribution.
Within the pre-Conquest period investigations at three
churches have been published in sufficient detail to assess
their importance (Exeter: Bidwell 1976; Gloucester St

Link to next section