An entry from a medieval manuscript dated 13th September 1392, exactly 633 years ago today, starts us on a detective journey which reveals the real reason why Beauvale Priory was founded and all about its little-known offshoot in Coventry...
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| Mount Grace Charterhouse in North Yorkshire had a layout and location very similar to Beauvale below... |
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| Beauvale Priory's original floor plan superimposed on today's Beauvale Tearooms |
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| Sketch of Beauvale's layout showing the grand main entrance gate |
Solitary Confinement - The more spiritually hardcore Nicholas's monks were the better and the Carthusians of Beauvale were certainly that, living in prison-like austerity. Each monk lived in a self-contained cell, a two-storey dwelling within a small walled garden. The monks led an extremely spartan life. They were the strictest and most austere of any of the religious orders and the most reclusive. Each white-robed monk lived in his own separate dwelling, and none of them were allowed to go out of the bounds of the monastery. Unlike other monastic orders they renounced all guests and community work. They were also a silent order, not being allowed to speak except for a brief conversation once a week. They ate alone, their meal delivered through a hatch in the wall although there was one communal meal once a week. They lived a solitary, contemplative life, were required to study and to work with their hands, their labour consisting of cultivating the fields and gardens, chopping wood and transcribing books. They gained a reputation for scholastic learning and literature. Even their worship was plain and simple. No gold or silver vessels or ornaments, no instrumental music, just singing. There were high walls around the entire site cutting off the outside world.
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| A white-robed Beauvale monk contemplatively walks in his garden |
St.Anne’s Charterhouse, Coventry - In 1382, inspired by Nicholas’s plan for his afterlife and using some of his monks from Beauvale, his relative William Zouche of Harringworth founded his own Carthusian priory by the River Sherbourne in Coventry... "the foundation stone was laid in 1385 by King Richard II. It contains additions from the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as several wall paintings dating to the same era."
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| St. Anne's Charterhouse, Coventry |
It was among just nine Carthusian monasteries founded in England and is the only one remaining with intact interiors. The earliest surviving painting at Charterhouse depicts the Crucifixion in the centre with the Virgin Mary and St Anne on either side and several smaller figures in between. The main figures are very large, and the painting would originally have covered the whole of the south wall of the monastery’s refectory. What remains has been restored. Due to extensive Post Reformation alterations to the building, only the bottom half now remains.
This is the only surviving wall painting in a Carthusian monastery in England which means it is of national importance – it is one of the best pieces of Medieval art in the whole country. Whilst much has been lost, large areas remain intact and in good condition, whereas a lot of medieval paintings are badly degraded.
In 2023 an archaeological dig tried to find the lost chapel of St. Anne’s where the Beauvale monks stayed while setting up Coventry Charterhouse. The links to Beauvale continued for many years. This entry in medieval admin papers, the Patent Rolls, from 1392 shows a gift to the Coventry Charterhouse of land and rents from Greasley farm settlements in our local area, Watnall, Selston, Brinsley, etc...
"Patents Rolls, Richard II, 13th September 1392 - Robert, Vicar of Gresley conveyed to the charterhouse of St Ann in Coventry, established in 1381 by monks from Beauvale, 3 messuages, 12 tofts, 2 carucates, 3 bovates and 83 acres of land and £4/12/7 in rents in Selston, Brynnesley, Neutorp, Watnowe Chaworth, Brokebrestyng and Hukenale Torherd."
Beauvale's Layout
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| Plan of the monks' rooms and garden. You can see where it fits into the bigger plan below (top centre)... |
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| Execution of John Houghton |
Beauvale's surrender document was signed by the Prior, Thomas Woodcock, and seven other monks: John Langdale, William Welles, Alexander Lowthe, Edmund Garner, Robert Gowton (proctor), Thomas Leyghton, and Thomas Wallis. Prior Woodcock was awarded an annual pension of £26 13s. 4d. The priory and most of its possessions were granted in 1541 to Sir William Huse of London. The manor of Etwall, previously held by the priory, was granted to Sir John Porte in 1540.
I'll leave the final word on Beauvale Priory's demise and destruction to a later vicar of Greasley Reverend Rodolph Baron von Hube from his history of the parish "Griseleia in Snotinghscire, (1901)"
"And so the Monastery of Beauvale continued for nigh two centuries, and except for the sound of the holy chants, which ever and again broke from the sacred confines within to the world without, there was perpetual silence within those walls. The monks had each their separate cell of small chambers, which they never left, except for their religious exercises in their church and vigils, and possibly too (though that was properly the occupation of the lay brethren) for some work pertaining to the cultivation of their lands. It is generally admitted, that the monastic orders were great agriculturists, and that they made their surroundings to smile in Nature’s beauty.
So far as Beauvale is concerned it was without the aid of man a lovely and romantic spot, much of the picturesque beauty of which still remains, and meets the eye of a thoughtful visitor with surroundings of soothing influence. But the hallowed structures of the past have nearly all disappeared. The ruthless hand of grasping vandalism has left nothing remaining that could be turned into cash, and there are now but some poor ruins of the long dismantled and once noble sacred pile. Must we add, alas! that the common people learned to copy their betters and to follow their deeds, until the irony of fate would have it, that parts of the broken pillars and capitals of the arcades of the Church should now be met with in cottage yards to serve the people as tub stands. We need not dwell on how the Priory was dismantled to become a ruin."
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| 1901 - Remains of the church wall at Beauvale Priory |
Read more about Beauvale Priory and the shocking and saintly antics of the de Cantilupes in this article (and its footnotes) at the "Tales from Watnall Hall" website... https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2022/06/greasley-castle-revisited-what-did-it.html
There cannot be many organisations that have existed for
over 600 years and still work in the same manner, with their daily working life
ostensibly unaltered. But Carthusian monasteries can make that claim. The white-robed,
shaven-headed Carthusian monks are still a silent order and still live a very austere
life, alone in small cell-like rooms with food passed through a hatch. Their
days are still mostly spent in silent religious contemplation and simple work.
But they discourage guests and monks rarely venture
outside so getting an insight into daily life is difficult. But there
is a very special film called “Into Great Silence” which was made after
great time, sacrifice and persistence by the filmmaker Philip Gröning. It
finally allows us to penetrate the walls of the oldest and largest of the
Carthusian monasteries, Grande Chartreuse located high in the French Alps, and perhaps
gain a true insight. The film follows the steady repetitive rhythms of the
monks’ life with no commentary or soundtrack, mostly just silence and
background noise but there are amusing moments of liberation too. I had
to laugh at the part where the monks are sliding on the snow like a bunch of
kids let out for school holidays. But then perhaps that's the point, to rejoice
in the simple things of life.
I watched it on the look out for signs of modern life and
there were quite a few mostly in the communal areas. The monks cells however
did seem free of anything modern. I
spotted cast iron central heating radiators, electric hair clippers, galvanised
steel pans, plastic buckets, packets of seed, a IBM Thinkpad laptop (!), lightbulbs
(very minimal and only seemingly used
for night time prayers), wristwatches, reading glasses, bananas, oranges, bottled
water, hiking boots, tubes of glue. So I have to conclude they do not live
exactly like Beauvale. There are too many modern day conveniences on show.
This is its story…
“Nearly 20 years after his initial request, filmmaker
Philip Gröning was granted permission by the General Prior of the Grande
Chartreuse monastery to document the day-to-day routines of the reclusive
Carthusian Order of Monks, a centuries-old Roman Catholic brotherhood of whom
next to no aural or visual documentation exists.
Gröning spent a year living in the Grande Chartreuse
monastery, observing the rules proscribed for the monks: silence except when
necessary for work, with a weekly four-hour exercise walk where conversation in
encouraged. Three hours of sleep at night, followed by two hours of prayer,
then another three hours of sleep. Monastery chores and the business of daily
life to occupy part of the day, with very little time that could be considered
free. The cloistered monks live out the majority of their days alone in a small
cell.
Though the monks live in silence, theirs is hardly an
existence without words. Liturgy, spoken and sung, plays a large part in their
communal life, with ancient words providing structure to the day. The monks
pore over Scripture and the writings of the saints. But mostly, they pray,
entering bravely and willingly into the great silence of God.
Most of us can’t imagine a life without distractions to
keep the horror of total silence away, but that’s the life that these monks
have chosen. Gröning uses chapter titles that repeat a handful of Bible verses
and quotations from other sources, describing the meaning that the monks expect
to find from staring into the abyss. For them, beyond the anxious blackness is
the hope of joy. Through the silence, God will speak with the still, small
voice that creates and sustains life, as he did to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-13,
one of the passages Gröning uses several times throughout.
Gröning was required to live and work among the monks,
filming by himself on hi-definition video and Super 8 for only a few hours a
day, using only available light and sound. The resulting work, Into Great
Silence, is a masterful object of contemplation, a 162-minute journey into a
cloistered world of ritualistic repetition, always with the promise of
revelation and transcendence”.
Gröning structures the film primarily with an eye toward
outsiders: the three subjects he returns to time and again are a black
novice-in-training, an elderly jack-of-all-trades who tends to the monastery’s
general upkeep, and a blind monk who patiently sits and prays before offering,
in the film’s subtly ironic climactic scene, a verbose thematic summation. In
structuring Into Great Silence around this particular trio—indeed,
they’re something of the film’s holy trinity—it is Gröning’s intent, I think,
to strip away his audience’s prejudices. Human beings are practically
conditioned to notice such things as skin color or infirmity first and
foremost—out of these superficial indicators we make snap composite judgments
about everything from economic background to educational degree, from sexual
preference to religious denomination.
Yet as Gröning’s camera acclimates to the Grande
Chartreuse’s sequestered rhythms there comes with it an increasing sense of
liberation. Faces and actions repeat and recur, the seasons segue quietly, one
into the other, and the tendencies and/or flaws of the human body cease to rule
the day. The monks still maintain their unique distinctions of self, but are
now united (as are we) in common purpose and singular pursuit. Pursuit of what
exactly? Call it God. Call it Cinema. Every person has their sublime object
of worship [mine is doughnuts] and Gröning’s film offers up some striking
and unforgettable parallels between religious and artistic struggle.”
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