The Anker's House
Nov. 13th, 2024 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe used to drive past the Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street, long ago, when we went swimming in Chester in the morning before work in Newcastle. We would see the signs outside for 'The Anker's House', and promise ourselves that we would visit, and find out what it was. That was a very long time ago, and in the interim we have learned that an 'anker' is an anchorite (or anchoress, but in this case it was always a man), that his house was built into the fabric of the church, and that it now houses a small local museum. We have even attempted to visit it, during Heritage Open Days, and been thwarted by its limited opening hours.
Recently,durham_rambler has been attending an exercise class (technically, cardio rehab) in Chester-le-Street once a week: initially he was told he was allowed a limited number of sessions, then that he could carry on indefinitely, and then last week that today would be the last one. So it must be time for me to complete this post which has been hanging around unfinished for a couple of months. The class is in the Parish Centre just across the road from the church; and we finally organised ourselves enough to arrive early, so that he could visit the Anker's House before going off to his session, and I could look around at a more leisurely pace.
What has blocked progress on posting, I think, is that my thoughts are trying to go in two directions at once. Very well, I'll go with that: let's do the tour first, then reflecxt on it afterwards. The Anker's House was on two floors, of which the downstairs houses the church's boiler; the upper room has a squint window through which the resident hermit could see the altar of the church, but other than that is mostly just a place to store a local museum. This us tiny, but has, as you might expect, some Roman heads:
some Saxon stonework, including this cross-shaft:
and a large number of information boards, which I will come back to. But first, a quick visit to the church itself, where the volunteers were very welcoming, and offerefd to open the Anker's House for me, and were reluctant to believe that I had found the door open and gone in, because this was not supposed to happen. Oh, dear.
I did not photograph - and now I wonder why not - the first thing that struck me about the church interior: there are fourteen tombs lined up along the north aisle. Well, I couldn't have photographed all of them at once, and the seating was so crammed up against them that even to photograph one at a time would have been tricky. Even so, I reproach myself for giving up too easily. Have some stained glass instead:
and a view of the organ with a nice piece of wooscarving:
All this was interesting and enjoyable; but what I took away from the visit was the information from those many display boards. Usually I complain about text-heavy museum displays that rely on telling, rather than showing me actual things, but on this occasion it was good to be told. Embarrassingly, what I was told was mostly something I already knew, but had never stopped to think about: that Chester-le-Street, which in my mind is a pleasant but undistinguished little town, was once Very Important Indeed. Chester-le-Street is known for three things:
The Roman fort isn't visible, because it lies under the town (the guide book argues that this continuius habitation makes it the oldest town in the county). But the headquarters buildings at its centre may have formed the basis of the Saxon church buildings - because those monks didn't just break their journey in Chester-le-Street, they stayed for over a hundred years. They built a cathedral here, before anyone had even heard of Durham. The earliest translation of the gospels into English was written here by someone called Aldred, who inscribed his glass between the lines of the Lindisfarne Gospels. King Alfred made a pilgrimage here (as did Athelstan, Canute, and several Scottish kings).
It's very refreshing to have your perspective so thoroughly shaken up.
Recently,
durham_rambler has been attending an exercise class (technically, cardio rehab) in Chester-le-Street once a week: initially he was told he was allowed a limited number of sessions, then that he could carry on indefinitely, and then last week that today would be the last one. So it must be time for me to complete this post which has been hanging around unfinished for a couple of months. The class is in the Parish Centre just across the road from the church; and we finally organised ourselves enough to arrive early, so that he could visit the Anker's House before going off to his session, and I could look around at a more leisurely pace. What has blocked progress on posting, I think, is that my thoughts are trying to go in two directions at once. Very well, I'll go with that: let's do the tour first, then reflecxt on it afterwards. The Anker's House was on two floors, of which the downstairs houses the church's boiler; the upper room has a squint window through which the resident hermit could see the altar of the church, but other than that is mostly just a place to store a local museum. This us tiny, but has, as you might expect, some Roman heads:
some Saxon stonework, including this cross-shaft:
and a large number of information boards, which I will come back to. But first, a quick visit to the church itself, where the volunteers were very welcoming, and offerefd to open the Anker's House for me, and were reluctant to believe that I had found the door open and gone in, because this was not supposed to happen. Oh, dear.
I did not photograph - and now I wonder why not - the first thing that struck me about the church interior: there are fourteen tombs lined up along the north aisle. Well, I couldn't have photographed all of them at once, and the seating was so crammed up against them that even to photograph one at a time would have been tricky. Even so, I reproach myself for giving up too easily. Have some stained glass instead:
and a view of the organ with a nice piece of wooscarving:
All this was interesting and enjoyable; but what I took away from the visit was the information from those many display boards. Usually I complain about text-heavy museum displays that rely on telling, rather than showing me actual things, but on this occasion it was good to be told. Embarrassingly, what I was told was mostly something I already knew, but had never stopped to think about: that Chester-le-Street, which in my mind is a pleasant but undistinguished little town, was once Very Important Indeed. Chester-le-Street is known for three things:
- It's the site of a Roman fort (the clue is in the name);
- it was once of the stopping places of the monks fleeing from Lindisfarne with the body of St Cuthbert;
- It appears in One Way Pendulum as a place so obscure, it strains credulity to claim to have been there ("at a loose end").
The Roman fort isn't visible, because it lies under the town (the guide book argues that this continuius habitation makes it the oldest town in the county). But the headquarters buildings at its centre may have formed the basis of the Saxon church buildings - because those monks didn't just break their journey in Chester-le-Street, they stayed for over a hundred years. They built a cathedral here, before anyone had even heard of Durham. The earliest translation of the gospels into English was written here by someone called Aldred, who inscribed his glass between the lines of the Lindisfarne Gospels. King Alfred made a pilgrimage here (as did Athelstan, Canute, and several Scottish kings).
It's very refreshing to have your perspective so thoroughly shaken up.
