England's Chapter Houses

By Nan Harrison, author of No Less Resentment

An ancient chapter house, the last surviving structure of a medieval monastery, plays a key role in the lives of the Bennet and Gardiner families in my book, No Less Resentment. In the book, the chapter house is newly discovered and restored. But in the times these structures were built, chapter houses played a critical role within the day-to-day life of the religious community.

These houses were attached to a monastery, friary, abbey, convent church, or cathedral in which members held their meetings. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, monastic communities began to form, and early leaders of the church began to set down rules for governance of those communities as early as the fourth century. The origins of the chapter house can be traced to the writings of St Benedict of Nursia, who in the sixth century laid out his rules for monastic communities. The third rule ordains that Benedictine monks and nuns must be called to council daily to discuss the affairs of their communities, though it did not specifically require a dedicated room or space. It wasn’t until the ninth century that references to chapter houses appeared in writings on monasterial architecture. The practice of creating a separate space for daily council was adopted by the Benedictines, Augustinians, and other monastic orders.

Based on the practice of reading a chapter of the St Benedict’s rules every morning, the community of monks, friars, or nuns who gathered were referred to as the chapter, and their meeting place referred to as the chapter house. For monastic orders, readings would include a martyrology, basically a listing of the names of martyrs relevant to the specific day; and a necrology, which was a register of those connected to the church who had died. The meetings would be convened by the abbot or abbess and would also include any disciplinary actions needed and the assignment of tasks for the day.

Chapter houses were used in secular cathedrals and monastic churches and had the same basic functions. Monastic churches and cathedrals adhered to rules set by the founder of their order; their members lived communally and took vows.

In secular cathedrals, chapter meetings were not necessarily daily occurrences. Rather than meaning nonreligious, in this instance, ‘secular’ refers to a church not connected to a monastic order; its clergy were ordained but not bound by monastic vows. The chapter, comprised of canons and other officers and led by a dean, met for administrative purposes, thus there would be no reading of rules. They were under the authority of the bishop of their diocese, though decisions by the bishop that pertained to the church or cathedral were subject to confirmation by the chapter.

Chapter houses were second only to the church building itself in their importance to the life of the religious community. In many instances, the chapter house was constructed immediately after the church building was framed and construction began.

Most chapter houses were rectangular, but they could also be circular, polygonal, or rectangular with one apsidal (semicircular) wall. Seats were built into the walls all around the perimeter, with a special chair or throne for the abbot or dean. Many were richly and colorfully decorated with frescoed walls, elaborate tracery and statuary, enormous stained-glass windows, and complicated rib-vaulted ceilings.

Medieval cathedrals and churches were generally constructed on an east-west axis with the apse and the sanctuary on the east end, closest towards the sunrise. Chapter houses in most churches and cathedrals were located on the east wing of the cloister, next to the sanctuary. Constructed with chapter meetings in mind, they were designed to have excellent acoustic properties, so that the attending members could hear each other speak across vast spaces.

Over the centuries, chapter houses and the churches to which they belonged were lost in wars, fires, and natural disasters. Usually, they were rebuilt. The Reformation that began in 1534 took a terrible toll on monastic churches, abbeys, and cathedrals. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England just before King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries—more than a third of them were in London. Relatively few of the buildings were completely demolished; many were sold, given to men loyal to Henry VIII, or turned into parish churches. Secular churches and cathedrals were not usually destroyed but often transformed into Anglican churches, only to be damaged or demolished a century later during the English Civil War. Three hundred years on, some were damaged by bombs during the Second World War.

Chapter houses were witnesses to history, some more than others.

Westminster Abbey’s Gothic chapter house was built in the mid-thirteenth century. It is octagonal with seating for up to 80 monks. During the Reformation, the monastery connected to it was dissolved and the church was made a secular cathedral with a bishop. Queen Mary I restored the Benedictine monastery during her brief reign, but when her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I gained the throne, she removed the abbot and monks and reestablished the church as a ‘royal peculiar’, meaning that it is responsible not to a bishop but to the sovereign. The chapter house was the place where the King’s Great Council assembled in 1257, the precursor to the English Parliament. The House of Commons met in the chapter house for several years in the fourteenth century. After Elizabeth I ejected the monks for the second time, the chapter house was used as a repository for state records up until 1863.

What is believed to be Britain’s oldest door is still in use in the passage to Westminster Abbey’s chapter house. The door is believed to have been built sometime around 1050, when Edward the Confessor founded the abbey, built in the Norman style and precursor to the cathedral’s Gothic reconfiguration from 1246-1255.

Canterbury Cathedral survived the Reformation but not the Civil War, when it was so heavily damaged that services were held in the chapter house for the next 70 years. It came to be known as the Sermon House. In 1986, the chapter house was the venue for the signing of the agreement to build the channel tunnel between Britain and France, signed by English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterrand.

Considered by many to be the most beautiful example of a medieval chapter house in Britain is the one in Wells Cathedral (shown in the opening photo). It is the first chapter house built as a first story (second floor) above the undercroft, which was built on the ground rather than below ground. It is octagonal with a central pillar supporting a ribbed vault ceiling. It is known for the graceful, flowing stairs leading to the chapter house and the comical sculpted faces that look down from above every seat.

The Salisbury Cathedral chapter house displays one of the original four copies of the Magna Carta. Stephen Langton, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, was an important figure in the negotiations leading to the signing of the landmark document, and he had many ties to Salisbury. Canterbury also had an original copy but after it was damaged by fire, it was sent to the British Library.

In the fifteenth century. the chapter house and refectory in Reading Abbey hosted several sessions of Parliament in order to avoid the plague that was sweeping London. The chapter house at York Minster was the site of the trials of a group of Knights Templar in 1310. They were not condemned to death as they were in France, but their order was dissolved, and they were split up and sent to other monasteries.

After the Acts of Suppression in 1535 and 1539, monastic orders disappeared from England. Mary I briefly lead a Catholic revival but her reign was short, and her half-sister Elizabeth I returned the kingdom to Protestantism. Religious houses were banned by law until the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 passed to offer refuge to French priests and monastics during the French Revolution. It also allowed limited public worship for English Catholics. In the mid-nineteenth century, English Catholics and Anglicans gradually began building new monastic communities, bringing back the building of charter houses. This coincided with the Gothic Revival movement, and chapter houses were also added to non-religious structures like the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the House of Commons Library in Ottawa, Canada.

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Public Domain Images:

BBC

Wikimedia Commons

References and Resources:

Macauley, David. (1973) Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Lehmberg, Stanford E. (Summer 1986) “Henry VIII, the Reformation, and the Cathedrals” Huntington Library Quarterly, Tudor History Issue, Vol. 49 (No. 3), pp. 261-270

Adcock, Charlotte (2016). An English Idiosyncrasy: The Development of the English Chapter House between the 11th and 15th Century (Publication No. HA3A1) [BA Undergraduate Dissertation University of Warwick]. Academia.edu

Brittain-Catlin, Timothy. (June 2014) “19th- and 20th-Century Convents and Monasteries, Introduction to Heritage Assets” Historic England. Retrieved on: 09/14/2024 https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-19-20-century-convents-monasteries/ 

Munday, April. (December 29, 2019) “Anatomy of a Monastery-The Chapter House.” A Writer’s Perspective. Retrieved on 09/10/2024 https://aprilmunday.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/anatomy-of-a-monastery-the-chapter-house/

“Explore Our History | Chapter House“ Retrieved on: 09/09/2024 https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-history/chapter-house/