HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

The etymology of the name Romsey has been much disputed. There can be no doubt about the meaning of the termination “ey”—island—which we meet with under different spellings in many place-names, such as Athelney, Ely, Lundy, Mersea and others, for Romsey stands upon an island, or rather group of islands, formed by the division of the river Test into a number of streams, which again flow together to the south of the town, and at last, after a course of about seven miles, empty themselves into Southampton Water. But several derivations have been suggested for the first syllable of the name. Some writers derive it from Rome, and regard Romsey as a hybrid word taking the place of “Romana insula,” the first word having been shortened and the second translated into Old English, or Saxon as some prefer to call it. Now it is true that there were several important Roman stations in the neighbourhood: Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum), Brige (Broughton), Venta Belgarum (Winchester), and Clausentum (near Southampton), and in passing to and fro between these the Roman legions must frequently have marched either through or near to the site of Romsey. Roman coins found in the immediate neighbourhood clearly show that the place was inhabited during the Roman occupation. Another derivation is the Celtic word “Ruimne” (marshy); this would make the name mean “Marshy island,” and there can be no doubt that this would be an apt description of the place in olden times; against this may be alleged that again the word would be hybrid. Yet another derivation which avoids this objection is the Old English “RÛm” from whence we get “room” and if we adopt this derivation Romsey, or Rumsey as it is still sometimes written and more often pronounced, would mean the roomy or “Spacious Island.” The reader can form his own opinion as to which is the most probable of these three suggestions. The writer is inclined to favour the third. But the visitor who, arriving at the railway station either by the branch line via Redbridge or by that which runs from Eastleigh, or from Salisbury, or Andover, proceeds to the Abbey, would not realize when he arrived at his destination that he was in an island, for the minor streams are not spanned by bridges, but have been completely covered in and run through small tunnels beneath some of the streets.

We have no records of Romsey before the original foundation of the Abbey, nor indeed for many years afterwards. The first authentic mention of the abbey is found in the chronicle of Florence of Worcester, who died in 1118, and whose work, at least that part of it which deals with English history, is a Latin translation of the Old English Chronicle. He writes “In anno 967. Rex Anglorum pacificus Edgarus in monasterio Rumesige, quod avus suus Rex Anglorum Eadwardus senior construxerat, sanctimoniales collocavit, sanctamque Marewynnam super eas Abbatismam constituit.” [1]

This Eadward, also surnamed the Unconquered, was the son and successor of the greatest of the Old English Kings, Ælfred, and reigned from 901 to 925. Sometime during his reign he founded the Romsey nunnery. There is no documentary evidence to fix the exact date, but it is generally assumed to have been 907. It is said that about two centuries earlier there had been a monastery at Nursling nearer the mouth of the Test, and on the tideway of the river. It was here that the great missionary to the Germans Winfrid or St. Boniface had been trained, but it was within reach of the ships of the Danish pirates, and in 716 they had ravaged it and reduced it to such utter ruin that scarcely one stone remained on another to mark the site. This monastery was never rebuilt, and Eadward, probably having its fate in mind, now chose a safer position for the new foundation, for the river at Romsey was too shallow to allow of the seagoing vessels of the marauding Danes to reach it. Eadward’s eldest daughter ÆlflÆd and her sister Æthelhild both adopted the religious life, and lived for a time at the monastery at Wilton. Here Æthelhild was buried, while ÆlflÆd was buried at Romsey. Their half-sister St. Eadburh became abbess of St. Mary’s Abbey at Winchester; and it is highly probable that ÆlflÆd ruled as abbess over the sister establishment at Romsey. Probably this was only a small religious community. Whether it was continued or not when she died no record remains to tell, but, as we have seen, it was refounded by Eadgar the Peaceable in 967, and on Christmas day of the year 974 St. Meriwenna was put in charge of the completed Abbey, which was constituted according to the Benedictine Rule. Some traces of this church still remain, though only discovered in 1900. Under the pavement of the present church, immediately below the tower, the foundations of an apsidal east ending of a church were found; now as it is well known that this is a Norman form for the east end, it must not be supposed that this apse was built in the time of Eadgar, but it very probably occupied the same position as the choir of his church. Other foundations were then looked for and found. And as a result of this investigation, it appears that the nave of Eadgar’s church extended as far to the west as the fourth bay of the present nave, that its crossing lay immediately to the west of the present transept, and that the apsidal choir was as wide as the present nave, and extended eastward as far as the screen now dividing the choir from the transept. Thus the total interior length of the church was about 90 ft. instead of about 220 ft., the length of the present building. Although the church was comparatively small, Eadgar made provision in the domestic buildings for one hundred nuns, a number rarely exceeded in after days. Peter de Langtoft, a canon of Bridlington who died early in the fourteenth century, writing of Eadgar says:

Eadgar’s church, however, was not destined to last long. Early in the year 1003, according to one of the few legends connected with the abbey, the form of St. ÆlflÆd appeared during mass to the Abbess Elwina, and warned her that the Danes were at hand, and would plunder and destroy the abbey; whereupon she, not disobedient to the heavenly vision, gathered her nuns together, and, collecting all the treasures that could be carried away, sought safety at Winchester, and there they abode until the danger was past; on their return they found the abbey in ruins. The inroad of the Danes in this year, led by Swegen, was undertaken as a retribution on the English for the cowardly and barbarous massacre on St. Brice’s Day, November 13th of the previous year, in which Swegen’s sister, in spite of the fact that she had embraced Christianity, had been condemned to death by Æthelred. [2]

There is no record of the rebuilding of the abbey after this destruction, but it could not have been long delayed, since we hear that in 1012 Æthelred’s wife Ælfgyfu (who afterwards married Knut, and is known under the name Emma) gave lands to the abbey, and shortly after Knut came to the throne, we learn from a still existing list that, including two who are marked as abbesses, there were fifty-four nuns at Romsey. [3]

The church restored after the raid mentioned above probably remained untouched until after the Conquest, when possibly the apsidal east end was built. It would seem that about 1120 the present church was begun, as usual from the east. As this church is so much larger than the earlier one, it is quite possible that its outer walls were built without in any way disturbing the eleventh century church within them, so that the services could be conducted without interruption. The general character of the work is late Norman. At this time a double eastern chapel measuring about 21 ft. from east to west and 25 ft. from north to south, as we know from excavations made by the late vicar, the Rev. Edward Lyon Berthon, was built to the east of the choir. This was entered by two arches, which may still be seen leading out of the ambulatory. Traces of the position of two altars were found; the floor was lower than that of the rest of the church.

The three western bays were added in the thirteenth century, and at the end of the same, or the beginning of the fourteenth, two windows with plate tracery were inserted in the east wall, and two chapels measuring forty feet from east to west took the place of the double Norman chapels mentioned above.

It will be seen, then, that the church shows specimens of Norman, Early English, and Decorated work, all of the best periods of the style, and therefore it is a splendid example for the student of architecture. We may be thankful that, with the exception of a few windows on the north side there is no Perpendicular work. When we remember that the wealth which flowed into the coffers of many cathedral and abbey churches during the Middle Ages chiefly in the form of offerings from pilgrims at wonder-working shrines, was often used in almost entirely rebuilding, or, at any rate remodelling, the churches in the fifteenth century, we may be surprised to find so little work of this period at Romsey. Possibly it is due to the fact that it did not possess any such shrine, and so did not attract pilgrims.

It is not improbable that Henry of Blois, the builder of the Church at St. Cross, near Winchester, may have had something to do with designing the Norman part of the church at Romsey. We know that Mary, the daughter of his brother, King Stephen, was abbess from about 1155 until she broke her vows, left the Abbey, and married Matthew of Alsace, son of the Count of Flanders, about 1161. Henry was Bishop of Winchester from 1129 until 1171. What more likely, then, than that Mary should consult her uncle, known to be a great builder, about the erection of the large church at Romsey?

In the time of Juliana, who probably succeeded Mary, and was certainly abbess for about thirty years before her death in 1199, the transitional work in the clerestory of the nave was carried out.

In the next century the church was extended westward by the erection of three bays and the west front with its three tall lancets and the small cinquefoil window above the central one, all inclosed within a pointed comprising arch. This work was done during the time when Henry III was king; there are records of several gifts to the abbey of timber by him from the royal forest. This was no doubt used in constructing the roof of the westward extension of the nave and aisles. The next work was the insertion of the two large east windows and the building of the pair of Decorated chapels, one of which was dedicated to Our Lady, and the other to St. ÆthelflÆd, or Ethelfleda, as her name was then spelt. They were probably divided by an arcade, and stood until the dissolution of the Abbey, when they were pulled down, being of no further use in the church of the abbey which was purchased by the people of Romsey and converted into a parish church.

It has been said that little Perpendicular work is to be seen in Romsey Abbey, but some did exist at one time. At Romsey, as at Sherborne, there were disputes between the abbey and the town, though fortunately at Romsey an amicable arrangement was arrived at. The north aisle of the abbey church had been for many years set apart for the use of the people of Romsey as a parish church, and was known by the name of St. Laurence; in the year 1333 the abbess endowed a vicarage. As the town increased in size the north aisle became too strait for the parishioners, and at times of great festivals they used to encroach on the nuns’ church. This led to disputes, and the matter was referred to William of Wykeham, the celebrated Bishop of Winchester, remodeller of his cathedral church, and founder of Winchester School, and New College, Oxford. He persuaded the nuns to give up the north arm of the crossing to make a choir for a new parish church to be built adjoining the abbey church, in such a way that the north aisle should be cut off by a wall and included in the new church. The north aisle of the abbey church thus became the south aisle of the parish church, the new building its nave, and the north end of the transept of the abbey church the parish chancel, the Norman apsidal chantry attached to the transept made a fitting eastern termination to the chancel. A chantry of the Confraternity of St. George, built on the north side of the new church, took the place of a north aisle. This was separated from the nave by a carved oak screen, part of which has been utilized in the construction of the screen between the nave and choir of the existing church. The building of this new parish church unfortunately involved the destruction of the north porch of the abbey church. When, after the dissolution of the nunnery, the people bought the abbey church of the King, the nave and north aisle of the new parish church were no longer needed, and were therefore demolished, the windows were inserted in the arches that had been cut in the wall of the north aisle of the abbey church, when these openings were again walled up. Two of these have, however, been removed, and modern Norman windows constructed on the old mouldings have taken their place. A doorway which had been cut in the north wall of the transept when the new parish church was built was no longer used after the church was pulled down, and a low side window near it has been blocked up and converted into a cupboard. The two eastern chapels were also demolished, and their east windows were inserted in the masonry used to block up the entrances into the chapels from the ambulatory. During the time that succeeded the Reformation many changes were made in the fittings of the church, galleries were erected in the transept and at the west end of the nave where the organ was placed. The walls were covered with whitewash, and probably with a view to make it easier to warm the church, walls were built behind the triforium arcading all round the church. These walls are shown in some of the illustrations made a few years ago; they have now been entirely removed. The internal appearance of the church about the middle of the nineteenth century was extremely distasteful to those affected by the Gothic revival, and drastic changes were made. “Restoration” was begun at first under the direction of Mr. Ferrey, who also restored Christchurch Priory. The inner roof of the three western bays of the nave aisles which had not been, like those of the other bays, vaulted in stone, were restored in wood and plaster about 1850, when the Hon. Gerard Noel was vicar; the nave roof was rebuilt a little later. Under the direction of Mr. Christian, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the chancel roof was restored, and the roof of the north arm of the transept was taken in hand by Mr. Berthon. Other work has been done more recently, and the present vicar has the intention of building a porch with a room over it on the north side, to take the place of the porch which was destroyed when the nave of the church of St. Laurence was built in the time of William of Wykeham, as already described.

The curious wooden erection on the top of the tower, somewhat resembling a hen coop or gigantic lobster pot, was added in comparatively recent times to contain the bells; drawings made at the beginning of the nineteenth century do not show it, but, those made about the middle of the century do. It is ugly, and adds nothing to the dignity of the church; probably the tower was originally crowned by a pyramidal roof which gave it the appearance of height so much required.

The east ends of the two choir aisles have in quite recent years been provided with altars and fitted up as chapels for week-day services. The two apsidal chapels attached to the transept are used as vestries, the one on the south for clergy and that on the north for the choir.