Downside Abbey
Watts, Henry C.
DOWNSIDE ABBEY By HENRY C. WATTS IN THE midst of the green fields of Somerset stands today the most beautiful, the most vitally alive thing in England—the abbey and church of Downside, whose...
...Not that a cardinal was an unknown guest in their monasteries...
...Compared with the simplicity of the rest of the abbey church, the transept, though imposing in its breadth and proportions, appears to be florid...
...The English secular press has been lavish in its praises, as it was lavish in its praise of Buckfast...
...The monks were at Vespers by the time I got to the abbey church, and the sound of the organ outside lent itself very pleasantly to the mood of a summer evening...
...Downside follows generally the lines of the mediaeval cathedrals and abbeys in England, in that it is not the work of a single designer, though its general style is the Gothic...
...The train takes you from Bath, or Bristol, or London, as the case may be, and from one or other of the nearby stations, a motor will put you down at the abbey gates...
...Downside answers the ferocious challenge flung down at Westminster...
...Of its once vast and powerful abbey all that remains is the gatehouse, before whose doors Abbot Hugh Cook was hanged in derision...
...The choice of architect was a happy one...
...The choir comes later—it was completed in 1905, the design of that famous church builder, Thomas Garner, its seven bays giving the tone to the whole...
...Yet, such is the amazing vitality of the Church and its monks, that the same shire that saw the destruction of Glastonbury sees the building of Downside...
...Farther west still, is Salisbury, the most perfect work of art ever wrought by a small nation...
...There are no special hardships in the way of a pilgrimage to Downside...
...In Somerset the greatest of all English monastic prelates was dragged from his cloister and hanged as a felon...
...But these husks and these ruins are not the end of the tale...
...As an architectural achievement, Downside Abbey is a work of art of which any nation might justifiably feel proud...
...And for these and many other kindred reasons, Downside stands for something much more significant than the completion of a very beautiful Catholic Church...
...English Catholicism and the monks of St...
...To approach Downside this way is to learn something of the ruthless measures taken to destroy not only Catholicism, but the English Benedictine monks in particular...
...its position is indicated by a rood-beam hanging from the roof...
...The next stage is Downside, though if the approach is made by way of Wells, you will pass the spacious, ivy-covered ruins, all that is left of Glastonbury, whose abbot was ignominiously hanged on a hill-top within the boundaries of his own abbey...
...For the rest, Downside Abbey lacks the massive screen of stone or oak, which in the pre-Reformation abbey churches separates the monastic choir from the rest of the church...
...The road passes through Winchester, whose choir was served by the Benedictines ever since they were installed in the time of St...
...This much of Downside was completed when the brilliant Catholic architect and Royal Academician, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was called in to design the nave, which is Downside's war memorial to its no old students who fell in the war...
...A large rose window lights the north transept...
...But it is as important as a sign of vitality as it is as a sign of beauty...
...This may be to come...
...As I entered the church the monastic choir was singing the verse Redemptionem misit populo suo, and I understood the significance of Downside for England...
...Not even Buckfast, whose abbey and church, built by the patient labor of the monks themselves, rise on the site of those very walls of which not one stone was left standing on another, bears quite the same significance of resurrection from death, as does the entirely modern abbey church of Downside, which is hailed as one of the finest examples of modern Gothic art in all Europe...
...This feature is not so prominent in the nave, which flings its tall stately columns up to the stone-vaulted roof...
...and at the end all these dead things that have been passed are come to life...
...As it stands at present, Downside Abbey is not entirely complete: two more bays remain to be added to the nave, thus bringing the number up to eleven, and the ceremonial west front is yet to come, with its great western doors, which form an essential feature in many stately ecclesiastical functions...
...Other portions of what was ultimately to become a vast abbey church were added by degrees...
...and the mother church of what the mediaeval Catholics called the illustrious use of Sarum English Protestantism reigns...
...Augustine himself...
...The clerestory windows have less length than those of the choir, but the expanse of wall is broken by the arches of the triforium that passes along the sides of the central aisle of the nave below the clerestory...
...The crossing, or lantern, is held up by four massive columns...
...A Somerset abbot was hanged from the gallows on Tor Hill, and today a Somerset abbot revisits his monastic home as a cardinal of the Catholic Church...
...for the designer of Downside's nave is the creator also of the wonderful cathedral which the Anglicans have built at Liverpool—a stupendous work of genius that gained for its creator the honor of knighthood...
...and then, at the journey's end there blossoms this wonderful thing of living beauty in the fields of Somerset...
...Although designed to harmonize with the choir, the nave offers a certain amount of contrast...
...It was the act whereby Dom Sigebert Buckley, sole survivor of the monks of Westminster, perpetuated the English Benedictine congregation, vested in him as the last of a long line of monks going back to St...
...Joan's prison, lies within the cathedral, where the old worship is displaced by the Anglican liturgy...
...The crushing blow to the English monks, which should exterminate them for ever, was thought to have been given in these Somerset fields, when Abbot Whiting of Glastonbury was hanged ignominiously on his own abbatial domain, and glorious Glastonbury was leveled with the ground...
...but it must have been very rare indeed for a Benedictine abbey to receive a cardinal as one of its own sons, as Downside did when its monks escorted Cardinal Gasquet to his throne in the monastic choir...
...This is the Valley of the Dry Bones, the way of the ruins...
...The end is Downside, living and beautiful...
...at the south transept there is a massive tower, which, although it rises to a height of 132 feet, remains unfinished...
...As the westward journey begins, away to the right lies Reading...
...The beginnings of the abbey church go back fifty years, when the first portion, the transepts, were built...
...The royal prelate, Cardinal Beaufort, who kept the keys of St...
...The monks assisted in the pontifical Mass celebrated by Cardinal Bourne, and monks were in attendance at the throne of Cardinal Gasquet...
...DOWNSIDE ABBEY By HENRY C. WATTS IN THE midst of the green fields of Somerset stands today the most beautiful, the most vitally alive thing in England—the abbey and church of Downside, whose glorious nave was recently dedicated by Cardinal Bourne with stately ceremonies such as England, even in the ages of faith, could have seen only rarely...
...But with its nine bays, the nave is sufficiently complete to give to the abbey church a sense of finality...
...Dunstan...
...Even in the golden age of Catholicism in England, it is possible that the English Benedictine monks seldom, perhaps never, took part in a ceremonial identical in every detail with that of the recent dedication of the abbey nave...
...A cluster of chapels, some of them remarkably beautiful with fine tracery work, radiates from the apsidal east end...
...Benedict strew the way with their ruins, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery...
...But if Downside is to be looked upon and thought of as something very much more than a beautiful Roman Catholic church, then that pilgrimage should be made by road—along the great highway that runs from London through Winchester and Salisbury, out to the West country...
...The fine Lady chapel which, as is common in England, lies behind the high altar, shows its columns through the three arches that form the eastern end of the choir...
...For the existence of the abbey, and of the flourishing monastic life which it enshrines, are the outcome of an incident that took place in the fetid air of a London prison in November, 1607, when a little, old man in his ninetieth year, broken with suffering and almost blind with the rigours of forty years spent in prison, conferred the monastic succession on two young English priests in his dungeon...
...Austerity is, perhaps, the dominant note of this beautiful abbey church, whose length of 335 feet entitles it to rank with the greater churches of England, whether modern or pre-Reformation...
...For when Garner built his choir he made provision for lofty clerestory windows, which let in a flood of light upon the stalls and the high altar...
Vol. 3 • January 1926 • No. 9
