to the Museum and Priory Ruins Guide

Norton Priory Museum & Gardens The Undercroft The Undercroft was built in the late 12 th century as the Priory storage range. It would have been used to store food, drink, cloth and plate and was looked after by the Cellarer. It was also used in the later buildings as a storage area. In 1868 Sir Richard Brooke 7 th Baronet turned part of the Undercroft into an impressive entrance hall. There are many original features to find, some more hidden than others! The Archways in the porch are not a matching pair; one is an original Romanesque archway and the other is a Victorian replica. When the porch was built in 1868, the archway was brought from elsewhere on the grounds to be a stunning feature in the new ‘Medieval’ entrance hall. The other arch was added to give the porch symmetry. If you are facing the archways, the one on the right is the original. You might notice that the one on the left is a bit fancier, which was more to Victorian tastes! The Angel hides between the porch and the original Undercroft. It was part of the internal spiral staircase for the Abbot’s Tower. The fireplace and tiled floor were added when the porch was built. The floor is deigned to highlight the vaults and the colour of the stone. There are also tiles bearing the Brooke’s coat of arms and insignia. Some of the tiles, which would have been very expensive, were removed by the family when they left. In the next room, the wine bins are the main feature. They were added in the 1780s and if you look closely you can still see the ‘bin numbers’. The Bell Mould is the other important feature in the Undercroft. When Henry the Eighth closed Norton Priory, the Priory bell was lost. However, fragments were later found and from these, a mould was made, which you can see in the Undercroft. This mould was then used to cast a new bell, which stands by the herb garden now. The Passageway was the original entrance to the Church. It is where visitors to the Priory would have waited, seated on the benches. Above the passageway was the Abbot’s accommodation, which was added later, and the remains of the spiral stairway can be seen in the doorway. There are also holes in the walls that would have held the beams for the second floor. There are some clear Mason’s marks on the stones, made by the masons who worked on the Priory. These showed how much work each man had done and what he should be paid.
© Norton Priory Museum Trust 1 Norton Priory Museum & Gardens St Christopher The St Christopher statue was probably commissioned in 1391, when Norton Priory was upgraded to an Abbey. He has seen the two lives of Norton Priory; as a home for the canons and a home for the Brooke family. St Christopher is made from sandstone, but when he was created, he was painted in many bright colours. St Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, so he was important to all Pilgrims who travelled to Norton Priory. They believed that if they saw him, they would be saved from death for that day. This was significant in a time when roads were full of thieves and crossing the river Mersey was dangerous. People felt safer and more willing to travel if they saw St Christopher. In return, the canons received one tenth of the profits from the ferry! 1536 saw the dissolution of the monasteries and the statue was sold as part of the property. At this time lots of images of saints were destroyed which is partly why this statue is so special. He was used as a garden ornament by the Brookes and was abandoned in the gardens from the 1920’s. In the 1960s the Brooke family gave the statue to the Liverpool Museums. Following a number of years in the Undercroft, some conservation work was done by National Museums Liverpool and he was eventually returned to Norton Priory on permanent loan. He has been described as an ‘incredible piece of workmanship’ by the Conservation Centre in Liverpool and as a ‘unique medieval statue’ by the Tate in London, where he was on loan a few years ago. In 1969 St Christopher was removed from the Calendar of Saints because of the ‘unreliability’ of his story. Now he is a ‘local’ status saint so his Saint’s day is only celebrated locally on 25 July. The story goes that an enormous man called Reprobus travelled in search of the greatest master in the world. He finally realised that the greatest master was Christ, so he decided to serve him by carrying travellers across a river. One night he carried a child across, but as he did, he felt the child get heavier and heavier. It turned out he was carrying Jesus Christ, who in turn was carrying the weight of the world. Jesus baptised Reprobus, giving him the name Christopher, which means ‘Christ carrier’.
© Norton Priory Museum Trust 2 Norton Priory Museum & Gardens The Priory Ruins
The Church was the most important building and would have been built in the shape of a cross. Rich people would pay to be buried in the Church, as close to the Altar as possible. Over 120 burials were found and some of these, with ornate covers, can be seen in the museum. The Church was large and richly decorated to show the status of the Abbey and to inspire awe in people. Around 40,000 tiles covered the floor. We also think that a statue of St Christopher would have been displayed in the Church so that pilgrims could look upon him. The East Chapel was added to the Priory when the canons carried out extra building works in the 1300s. It was possibly a shrine that contained a fragment of the true cross that one of the Barons of Halton brought back from the crusades. Local people would have been allowed to attend the Church on special days, but they were separated from the canons by an ornate screen. The Cloister was used as the Tudor rubbish dump, and a number of clues to life in Tudor times were found there. There is a book cupboard, on the external wall of the Undercroft, which can be seen from just outside. It might look like a window but it as probably used to store sacred books. The ground level used to be higher and this wall was part of the cloister. The Chapter House was where the daily business of the Priory was conducted. It was re­built in the 1200s and made much bigger, so it could accommodate the increased number of canons at Norton Priory. It was decorated with ornate carvings such as the beak head (right) which would have been above a doorway. The Dormitory was directly next to the Church. This would have been handy for when the canons had to walk to Church in the middle of the night for a Church service! The warming room would have been directly underneath – this was the one place in the Priory that had a fire and the heat would rise up and heat the dormitory. The canons had a bed each, but all shared a room. This reinforced the idea that all were equal in the Priory. The Abbots Tower was added around 1450, and would have contained the Abbot’s private lodgings. It was kept and used in the Tudor house but was destroyed to make way for the new Georgian house in 1750. Monasteries and Priories were one of the few places in medieval England that would have toilets. The latrines at the Priory would probably have been drop toilets – simple holes which opened straight onto the sewer. Water would flow along the drain at the bottom, regulated by a sluice. Kitchen waste and water from the roof would also pass into the drain which would © Norton Priory Museum Trust 3 eventually be washed into the mill pond. Plan of the Priory Ruins
© Norton Priory Museum Trust 4 Norton Priory Museum & Gardens The Medieval Herb Garden Monastic Houses all had herb gardens for
· Dying
· Strewing (scattering sweet smelling herbs)
· Culinary use
· Medicinal purposes The present garden at Norton Priory was made as part of the BBC’s ‘Hidden Gardens’ programme. The skeletons in the Museum collection were examined to discover what diseases they had. This information was then used to choose herbs that would have been used to treat these diseases. Some of the most common diseases had specific herbs to treat them. The most common diseases among the skeletons uncovered at Norton Priory were:
· Tuberculosis (Symptoms: Coughing blood, fever, sweats, large lymph nodes, boils, scabs).
· Leprosy (Symptoms: Blindness, scabs, swollen feet, clawed hands, gangrene)
· Paget’s Disease (Symptoms: Pain, soft bones, fractures, swollen skull)
· Rickets (Symptoms: Non­fatal bone pain and teeth defects). The garden was planted using plans from other monastic sites. There is room between each bed for one canon to kneel and another to walk behind. It is overlooked by the ‘Kneeling Monk’ sculpture and is close to the replica bell. Some of the Herbs in each bed are: Culinary Herbs: Rosemary, thyme, coriander, fennel, sage, parsley Dye Plants: Woad (for blue), Madder (for red), Weld (for yellow) Herb Robert Strewing Plants: Mugwort, woodruff, lavender, mint, lemon balm Woad Signature Plants (for specific diseases): Lungwort (for lungs), lesser celadine (for piles), herb robert (for head wounds) Pagets: Fennel, mint, clary sage Tuberculosis: Coriander, garlic, lovage, elecampane Rickets: Comfrey, valerien, vervain, rue, anise © Norton Priory Museum Trust Leprosy: Juniper, sage, lemon balm, hyssop, Betony
marshmallow 5 Fennel Plan of the Herb Garden
© Norton Priory Museum Trust 6