Black Country Ride No 3
"They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr Weston. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound" (Emma). Quite so. It's a relief, then, to head west out of the unpromising city where I now live, and on this, a rather special day. It could very well be my - or indeed anybody else's - last chance to see Halesowen Abbey. "Last chance?" I hear you say. "But there's hardly been a first chance". Dear me, it's obvious you've not been reading the small print on the English Heritage website. From March to October, on the last weekend of the month and from 10 till 4, you can actually look around part of the ruins. But the question now is: for how much longer? There are rumours of a possible development on the site, which would mean a lot of preliminary archeology. Either way it could become out of bounds to the merely curious - and probably for a good while to come.
The turning off Manor Way is almost impossible to spot, you could easily end up in Kidderminster... Fortunately I'm from these parts. The lane is narrow and muddy, but suddenly there it is, over on the left: a huge sandstone wall in the shape of a U, still defiantly there despite 800 years of weather and indifference. It's far from clear what this soaring structure was until you go round the other side and see the carved tops of arches where statues might have stood. Off in various directions the eye takes in other disparate fragments of wreckage - the corner of a building with two empty windows, a row of pointed arches resembling a cloister, and, miraculously, one complete building looking like a tithe barn.
Halesowen Abbey, remains of the Presbytery (Choir) to the side of the altar
Halesowen Abbey, South Transept
How extensive this place must have been is only emphasized by the mysterious humps and dips out in the fields, the remains of dams and fishponds which sustained the monks of Halesowen for three hundred years until the last abbot, William Taylor, was compelled to surrender everything in the church and monastery - bells, lead, plate, furnishings - to Henry VIII's men in 1538. So little is now left that it makes almost no sense without a map.
Fortunately at this moment I'm joined by Mick Freer, a volunteer from the Halesowen Abbey Trust who gives up a weekend every month to show people around. He is the best kind of guide, enthusiastic and very well informed. He shows me the barn which may once have been an infirmary to the Abbey. The timber framed roof inside is the gem - medieval beams with decorated uprights.
Halesowen Abbey, The Infirmary exterior
Halesowen Abbey - interior medieval beams
There is a collection of miscellaneous carved stones from the site, including what looks like a lion, and set in the wall is a small figure of a crusader with the crossed knees that identify him. Outside there is what looks like a chimney to warm the upstairs from a fireplace below. Mick shows me a mason's mark carved in the sandstone. A whole lost world begins to come to life when you see such things. This was a vast and prosperous farming enterprise, founded in 1215 under King John and run by the Premonstratensian canons of Hales, an order named after Prémontré in north-eastern France. Its authority and influence spread over a wide area, to Cradley, Rowley, Oldbury, Quinton. And the Abbey had a precious relic, the head of St Barbara, which was an object of devotion, and indeed a woman's head carved on the outer wall of the Infirmary might be an image of that head. The Catholic England of the Middle Ages, of Chaucer and Brother Cadfael, is now almost as remote as Pompeii, although Eamon Duffy brings it briefly back to life in his splendid The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400 - 1580. Near the farmhouse is the Frater or Refectory where the monks ate and may have offered hospitality to travellers, perhaps to the accompaniment of Biblical readings. Or not, since the monks are known to have observed a rule of silence.
The Frater or Refectory (left) and possibly the Kitchen (right)
Area with dam and fishponds, possibly a leat or artificial watercourse to serve a watermill
So what happened to the canons of Hales when the end came? Did they find jobs and marry? Did they stay on in Henry VIII's church as priests? Who can now say? The wrecked Abbey was plundered to make new buildings in the area over the next few hundred years, until the relatively recent fashion for preserving such things came in. What remains of it is scattered around Manor Abbey Farm, whose seventeenth-century barn is aligned with the nave and includes part of the church's fabric. I drive off, leaving this marvellous and unfairly neglected site to its uncertain future. Look after it, Mick - I know you'll do your best.
© Dennis Wood 2009
For full view of above photos, click on pictures in our gallery ...here