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This question was asked recently, did the Bedesmen garden? By gardening I inferred it meant more than doing light weeding or placing a few spring bulbs in the Churchyard, although both those activities may have occurred. I understood it to mean the Bedesmen were engaged in a well organised programme of growing a variety of crops for their and other people’s benefit.
This question was asked recently, did the Bedesmen garden? By gardening I inferred it meant more than doing light weeding or placing a few spring bulbs in the Churchyard, although both those activities may have occurred. I understood it to mean the Bedesmen were engaged in a well organised programme of growing a variety of crops for their and other people’s benefit.
The Bede House was a charitable foundation built at the instigation of Archbishop Chichele in the early 1400s to house 12 poor men of Higham Ferrers. The original constitution had provision for one woman of good character to look after them. The men were given shelter, food, a wood allowance, weekly payment and an annual clothing allowance. Some of the money to fund these allocations was provided by the Bedesmen receiving the rents of some small gardens belonging to the Bede House, which were collected and paid to them. This was still happening in 1849 when William Whellan wrote his History, Gazetteer and Directory of Northamptonshire(1) , but by then the Chamberlains of the Corporation were collecting the rents (£2.10s per annum) and paying them to the Bedesmen.
It cannot be ascertained exactly where these gardens were, but adjacent to the parsonage on the 1591 Norden Map of Higham there is a field which seems to be divided into four squares (see right).
Numerous medieval gardens, particularly ones associated with religious foundations, adopted a pattern of separated areas, like raised beds, for different crops. The site identified would have been easily accessible for the Bedesmen if they gardened there in the early days of the foundation of the Bede House.
Medieval gardens associated with religious foundations were not always very large. The individual gardens of the monks at the Carthusian Priory at Hinton in Somerset were only about 73 feet square. These monks, (known as the order of gardening monks), could use their plots for cultivation, meditation and exercise.
The crops grown by Bedesmen might have included a similar range of produce including leeks, onions, beans, hemp, cider apples, herbs for the infirmary, and fruit trees.
Herbs were very important for medicinal purposes, as anyone familiar with the fictional monk Cadfael(2) will know. Rule 12 says that … at six o’clock at night they shall ring a bell in the west end of the hospital halls … ,(3) which suggests that if a Bedesman was ill, support would be close at hand.
At the same time as Henry Chichele founded the Bede House in 1422, he also founded, under licence from the Crown, a college now known as Chichele College. It has been suggested that the Bede House was annexed to the foundation of the college.(4) Certainly the two institutions were initiated at the same time and very possibly there was a lot of interactions between the personnel.
The clearest evidence for the Bedesmen gardening is found in the original rules set up to guide their activities. Thirty four of the rules relate to issues organising the day-to-day maintenance, such as food, clothing etc. as well as praying and time to get up. However there is one rule, number 28, which says that in Spring time Bedesmen … should go into the garden and dig and dress the garden at their own cost but if they are away they are to pay those who do the work 1d a day and there will be key to the garden given to the woman and she to see there is no waste in the house or garden.(5) Nationally gardening was a major monastic activity, and monks for a long time were at the forefront of all farming innovation. England was an agrarian society when the Archbishop set up the foundation. Gardening was in part pleasurable but also essential.
This still leaves the question of where did they garden in the Spring time and what did they grow? It might be that the Bedesmen did garden in the adjacent field as described above. The monks at Hinton had separate personal allotments and at least one of these had a door between two plots.(6) The Bedesmen might have had a similar arrangement, but the inference in the rules is that there was only one key. To have a key suggests a walled garden.
In the 1591 Norden Map (right) one can see the churchyard is listed just as that.
Given that St Mary's church had been in existence for broadly 200 years by the time the Bede House was built, I think the churchyard had been for burials only.
There is nothing here to suggest a walled garden.
However, there is a well-known walled garden at Chichele College, which was laid out in 1425, to support the men who were living in the buildings created by Archbishop Chichele. My suggestion is that the Bedesmen gardened there. On the map opposite the distinctive quadrangle pattern of rectangles that are very common in medieval garden organisation can be seen. This garden was purpose built, easily defended from any aggressors, and potentially designed to function as a food source for the two communities created by the Archbishop. On balance I think the rule 28 referred to the Bedesmen gardening in the walled garden at Chichele College.
Brenda Lofthouse
References
References
History, Gazetteer and Directory of Northamptonshire. Whellan. London. 1849.
A series of books by Ellis Peters
Rules of the Bede House from www.rushdenheritage.co.uk
History, Gazetteer and Directory of Northamptonshire. Whellan. London. 1849. Page 873
Rules of the Bede House from www.rushdenheritage.co.uk
Medieval English Gardens. T McLean. New York 1981.
Illustrations
Illustrations
1591 Norden Map of Higham Ferrers. www.rushdenheritage.co.uk
Mary Clear, Chair of Incredible Edible Todmorden. A Community Benefit Society: Registered number 7230
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