Re: VMs: More on Abbot Beere...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Well, having spent the day in Glastonbury Abbey and had a good think, I've 
got a pretty good idea of exactly where I think Abbot Beere's grave would 
have been. I took a load of photos around the Abbey using a disposable 
camera - when they're developed, I'll scan them and post them up.

I'll try to get a half-decent floor-plan of the abbey to annotate, but here 
are my premises, reservations, reasoning and conclusion (so far, at least).

(1) Leland says that Beere "made the Chapelle of the Sepulcher in the South 
End Navis Eccl. wereby he is buried sub plano marmore yn the South Isle of 
the Bodies of the Church." However, none of the floor plans I've seen 
mention this Chapel at all.

(2) Leland also writes that "Bere cumming from his Embassadrie out of 
Italie made a Chapelle of our Lady de Loretta joining to the north side of 
the Body of the church". The Loretto chapel is marked on modern floor plans 
as being conjoined to the north transept - but I'm not 100% convinced that 
~quite~ matches Leland's description, so I'd need to read some of F.Bligh 
Bond's work to get a bit more of a feel for what's going on here.

(3) The original Chapel of the Sepulchre is a small room in the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: according to:-
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bjohnson/yfbl/YFBL11.HTM
	It is very small, only about six by seven feet, and nearly half
	its floor is covered by the marble slab which is said to cover
	the tomb of our Lord. The whole room is cased with marble
	and is lighted by forty-three lamps of silver and gold
	belonging to the various sects that keep up worship here,
	which are kept forever burning.

(4) So: if we want to locate Beere's grave, it seems as though we will need 
to locate the Chapelle of the Sepulcher that he had built "in the South End 
Navis Eccl.", as this is "w[h]ereby" he was buried.

(5) The nave seems to have two rows of eight piers each (now marked by 
diamond-shaped outlines in the grass) - but any extra chapel (however 
small) to be placed in the nave area would have to fit somewhere, while not 
altering the functioning of the building too much.

(6) To me, the strongest candidates by far are the four corners of the nave 
- but the NE and SE corners (right by the central tower) would be somewhat 
intrusive. Better by far, I think, to place any predicted extra chapel in 
either the NW or SW corners, by the entrance from the Galilee (which 
connects St Mary's Chapel to the W end of the nave).

(7) My reasoning points now to one of two possible placements for Beere's 
Chapel of the Sepulcher relative to the nave - either the NW corner (ie, by 
the North Porch entrance) or the SW corner (by the door leading to the W 
end of the cloisters).

(8) However, the long-held tradition (correct me if I'm wrong) was for 
abbots to be buried near doorways to cloisters - and our well-educated 
Abbot Beere would have been fully aware of this.

(9) Therefore, I'm fairly confident about predicting (a) a small chapel in 
the SW corner, next to the door leading out to the cloisters (but missing 
from current floor plans), constructed by Abbot Beere; and (b) the location 
of Beere's grave as being beside that, in the South Aisle.

It may not sound like much of a conclusion, but it took me all day (though 
a half-decent architectural historian would probably have got there in 
minutes). :-o

Finally, some more Abbey-related links: here's a great photograph from 1857:-
	http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o67119.html

Here's F. Bligh Bond's take on geometry and cubits in architecture:-
	http://www.odeion.org/gematria/gemsup-iii.html

Here's a page which has chapter-by-chapter links to a transcription of Rev 
R Willis' 1866 "The Architectural History of Glastonbury Abbey":-
	http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/image/England/glastonbury/mainglastonbury.html

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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