Bourne Abbey Church

   Bourne Abbey today.  The remains of the Arrouasian house of St Peter & Paul founded in 1138 by Baldwin de Clare brother of the Earl of Pembroke.   It was never very big but was under continual aristocratic patronage, starting with the Wakes & then the Hollands.  This pattern of sponsorship, which also included Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, wife of the Black Prince, culminated in Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.  In her first will her intention was to be buried at Bourne with her 2nd husband, Edmund Tudor, who was then buried in the Greyfriars church in Carmarthen.  In the end she was interred in Westminster Abbey and her husband remained in Wales (though moved to St David's cathedral at the Reformation).  The abbey was dissolved in 1536. The nave which had always been used by the parish was retained by them and the rest demolished. The monastic quarters that were to the north of the church became a private residence. They were not finally demolished until the nineteenth century.

   The grandest part of the church is the mighty west front; an incomplete attempt to create a two towered façade. Like many Early English facades it is very flat.  I put its unfinished state down to structural problems - hence the blocked windows and the great buttress - obviously a later addition.  The three central lancet windows are Victorian, replacing a single great Perp window.  The west door below is too a late Medieval insertion.  The bell stage of the tower and the clerestory are of the same period.  Tempting to assign them to the patronage of Lady Margaret, but there is no evidence, alas, for her involvement.  The south side is the most picturesque, with a porch and a truncated transeptal chapel. The chancel is I think post-reformation. I have no evidence; it's just a hunch  There are a number of good gravestones in the church yard and standing forlornly in a corner the former Grammar School building.

   Inside the west end, which is almost like a western transept, is interesting and monumental with a wall-walk at clerestory level and all sorts of incomplete fragments of architecture. Obviously something grand was attempted but abandoned for whatever reason. The nave arcade is robust Norman, but on the whole the interior is vast, big-boned and a bit empty. There are, alas, no fittings commensurate with the scale. The church was restored in 1868-9 by Edward Browning, son of Bryan so beloved of this parish.