The Bede House

Introduction

The town gets its name from the Saxon Hech Ham, meaning a settlement on a hill. The town is named "Higham" in the Doomsday Book, the latter part of the name coming from Earls Ferrers who were lords of the manor. A castle built in Norman times by the Peverels’ later passed to the Ferrers family who were responsible for the first granting of a charter to make the town into a borough in 1251, thus making it one of the oldest boroughs in the country. This status was lost in the recent reorganisation of local government areas, but the title of Town Mayor is still retained, along with the historic regalia, and the Regency Town Hall in the Market Square.

The Foundation
Before we look at the fine old building which is the historic Bedehouse we should first know of its reason for being, which was originally to house the Bedesmen.

About the year 1422, when planning his College at Higham Ferrers, Archbishop Henry Chichele - Primate of All England from 1414 -1443 and a native son of the town, founded "In a place adjoining the Vicarage and the Churchyard", his Bede House or Hospital to be a dwelling place for 12 men over 50 years old to live "in close company" with one woman to look after them.

It consisted, as was the manner of those times, of a common open Hall, and was probably the finest dwelling in all Higham outside the Castle, Each man had his little cubicle with its locker, divided off by a screen from his fellows, and the rest of the Hall formed a common room with a fine open fireplace, itself a relic of even older times. On the South, a sheltered garden was added by taking part of the land of the Vicarage.

In those days, no old age pensions were provided by a welfare state, but Henry Chichele provided each old man and the woman with a pension of 1d per day, at a time when the working man’s wage was little more than 5 new pence a week, and the Bedesman’s silver penny was worth more than the modern pension. He could afford to buy meat for his Sunday dinner with enough to be put on one side to be "powdered up against Wednesday" by the Bedeswoman. Each Bedesman had besides "As much black frieze as will make every man a gown and the woman also". Five shillings was allotted for filling the lamp which was to hang in the midst of the Hall, and five shillings for a barber to come every Friday at noon to shave them and dress their heads and to make them clean. Every year they had nine loads of wood again at Christmas and 10 shillings for charcoal or other fuel for a brazier to heat water for washing.

Much was given to the old people, but much was expected of them, and each was required to be sworn upon the Gospels before the Warden or Sub-Warden of the College, to be "true to the house" and to observe and keep a long series of orders and statutes governing their daily lives.

One of their own sober and wise members was chosen to be Prior, and they were to be under his authority and must not "withstand" him. None of evil character could join the company, nor could the brawler, the drunkard, or the haunter of taverns hope to remain. For his first offence he would be warned; for the second fined 1d; for the third fined 2d and the last "explused".

The woman must be of good name and fame, quiet and honest; "no brawler or chider, but glad to please every poor man to her power, and if she will not be ruled, the Warden and Prior are to put her away and choose another".

Only men who could not "live of themselves" could be appointed Bedesmen. Any man who had lands or tenements was not to be admitted "except that he will give his land or tenement after his death freely to the said hospital for ever".

On his appointment the Bedesman must bring with him his bed and bedding; viz., a mattress, a bolster, a pillow, two pairs of sheets, a blanket and coverlet; also a brass pot of two gallons and a brass pan and pewter dish and a saucer. He must also give a dinner to the brethren or else pay each of them 4d. If a man had no such goods of his own, he could purchase what he needed from the store-house into which all the goods of those who died were taken by the Prior. If the newcomer had no gown of his own he could take the best gown of the man whose place he took. He had to pay "three shillings and four pence, for putting it on his back, to the others to make merry withal, and also sixpence for oatmeal and salt, and two pence for the woman for making his bed, and a penny to the barber".

Like most mediaeval foundations the basis of a charity is a rule of prayer; indeed the word "Bede" means prayer. Hence "Bedesmen" equals "Praying men". The twelve Bedesmen were not to be idle;. they lived by a definite Rule, and their time was divided into periods of prayer, and manual work in the garden South of the Hall. They began their day at 7am in the Summer and at 8am in the Winter with a morning office - Matins - and followed it with an hour’s meditation. On all Sundays and feasts there would be Mass either in Church or in the Bedehouse Chapel. They were to pray for the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, for the Royal Family, for the Faithful Departed, the Archbishop, and for the founders of the charity (Archbishop Chichele and his brother) and "all others that they shall fare the better for". The Chapel and the East end of the Hall was perhaps provided in order to relieve the sick and infirm members from the rigours of the long prayers across at the Church. It was indeed a general custom to provide a chapel at the end of all hospitals and infirmaries so that even the bedridden should be able to hear Mass. Whether the Bedesmen were required to assist at the Lesser Offices (Prime, Lauds, Terse, Compline, etc.), which were of course observed by the members of the College each day at the Church, is not clear. But after some work among the herbs in the garden, they certainly took part in the chief evening office of Vespers or Evensong, and closed the day with a further period of prayer.

At times the Foundation seems to have taken in men from outside Higham Ferrers. In some cases the parishes from which they came gave guarantees to ensure that their candidates would not become chargeable to Higham Ferrers Poor Rate if for any reason they had to leave the Bedehouse.

The choice of candidates for the Bedesmen’s fraternity seems originally to have been entrusted by Henry Chichele to the Warden of the College, and he had arranged for the money for the allowances to be paid our of College funds. The College ceased to exist after the Dissolution, and in 1543 its possessions were given to Robert Dacres. This gentleman, who was a member of the Royal Court, was charged with the payment out of these possessions of the 7d a week to each Bedesman and the woman, and with the provision of 5 yards of black frieze (at 8d per yard), together with the wood, the fuel, the lamp and the attendance of the barber as laid down in the Statutes, The King himself (Henry VIII) took over the right to choose the Bedesmen, and in 1556, when his daughter Queen Mary granted a new Charter to the Borough, she entrusted their appointment to the Corporation.

Robert Dacres also remained responsible for the maintenance of the Bede House itself, and in later years when his possessions had been sold to Lord Malton, from whom the Fitzwilliam family inherited them together with the responsibility for the fabric of the Bede House, Earl Fitzwilliam did in fact make extensive repairs in the mid 19th century which ensured the preservation of this fine building to our own times.

Earlier this century a lump sum was invested to provide for all these obligations and to discharge the Fitzwilliam estate. The charity then assumed its present form, but the amount invested does not provide anything for the maintenance of the fabric.

Within recent years, the people of Higham Ferrers have responded generously to an appeal for the restoration of the Bede House. Further work, including the East Window glass and the opening up of the fireplace and rebuilding of the chimney stack, has been made possible by private donations. By 1972 the restoration work was completed and an extension added on the South side to provide cloakrooms and kitchens. This work was made possible by the sale of the old Parish Rooms, in the Deeds of which conditions were laid down requiring the provision of suitable alternative accommodation for the needs of the Parish. This the newly restored and equipped Bede House fulfils completely.

The Buildings
Archbishop Henry Chichele, as a great statesman and friend of the King, could call upon the leading Architects of the day, to build his Bede House for him. We do not know who in fact was employed, but it seems likely that the same hand was at work on his nearby College, which was finished by 1425. The builder produced a hall which, if simple in plan, was given a striking form by the use of bands of the local cut ‘limestone alternately with the dark ironstone courses on the West and North walls. The design was used only for the walls visible from the churchyard. On the East and South the walls are plain rubble, and the string courses which are used so effectively in the West front and "tie" the buttresses on the long North wall, disappear entirely on the South front. There, only ironstone buttresses are used, and between them the wall is flat, unrelieved roughness.

The West front is the main architectural feature, Its framework is a high gable, carried to the ground by the corner buttresses. The base of the wall rises in string-courses, and where these meet the central doorway they are used as bases for the jambs of the door. A higher string-course is carried up and over the top of the doorway to form a rectangular frame and at the same time support the large five-light window above. Both door and window have plain arches; their lines are softened by shallow relief carving in the form of crockets, and each has a finial of similar design.

At the apex of the gable is an elaborate bell-cote of beautiful design with statues in niches facing North and South. A little bell by Thomas Eayre, the Kettering bell-founder, dated 1737 and inscribed "Gloria Deo Soli’" ("Glory to God alone"), replaces an earlier bell.

The North and South walls of the Hall, over sixty feet long are divided into six bays by buttresses reaching up to the roof where they support the interior roof beams. In the second and fifth bays on either side are square-headed windows of two lights with cinque-foil tracery and moulded transoms. Good plain design was the order of their building. One window on the South has its lower tracery in the Early English style, perhaps an odd scrap of old masonry used for mending broken stonework. On the last buttress on the South side - just by the garden door - are remains of a "scratch" or Mass dial.

At the East end of the Hall is the chapel, built on to the main hall very much as a chance! to a church. In the centre of the North and South walls are set deep rich pointed ogee windows of two lights with crockets and finials well cut. The East window of three lights has been almost entirely rebuilt during restorations about a century ago, when the chapel was unroofed and the walls in a semi-ruinous condition.

In the regulations the HaIl is referred to as the "dorter" (or Dormitory), and in the midst hung the lamp to be lit "by the appointment of the Prior all winter-time from six to eight at night to light the poor men to bed and then to be put forth".

On the South side is the open fireplace around which, no doubt, everyone would sit between the end of prayers and the time for the "lampt to be put forth". The fireplace itself is nearly a hundred years older than the Hall, and possibly the first Bedesmen remembered it in a different setting. It may have come from the Castle, which had been extensively reconditioned after the fire of 1410 (a dozen years before the foundation of the charity), or possibly from the Leper Hospital of St. James, established after the crusades, and which stood just outside the South boundary of the Borough. Leprosy has almost disappeared by 1423, when the Bode House was built, and although the foundations of ST. James continued for another century, the building may have fallen out of use and this fireplace found another home.

Overhead is the lofty roof - a single span of fine oak. Legend has it that it was made of cedar and that no spider or insect could be found upon it. While this certainly is not true, it is a fact that during recent restorations of the Hall, the workmen engaged on the roof remarked at the singular scarcity of spiders which normally infest such places.

The six bays of the roof correspond with the buttresses on the outside of the building, each main beam being supported by a carved wooden base set in the wall. The wall plates are embattled.

The great West window floods the Hall with light, but plain glass fills the five lights where until the eighteenth century there were "in the South division the arms of the See of Canterbury; in the middle France and England quarterly; and in the Northern the arms of Chichelle - ‘Or a chevron between three cinquefoils gules’. Above the arms were miniature portraits of our Saviour, the Virgin, and of several Bishops mitred with the pastoral staff in their hands and in their pontifical robes".

It was not in those days the fashion to be sentimental and talk of "Eventide" homes, but whoever designed this hail and window knew how to catch the evening sunlight for the old people within.

At the East end of the hail a wide flight of steps under a great arch leads through a screen into the little chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, Henry Chichele’s illustrious predecessor as Archbishop. The windows are decorated inside with crockets and elaborate finials. The East window was once - like the West -"ornamented with glass finely stained and several portraits of saints and kings". These probably included St Thomas himself and St. Edward the Confessor, joint patrons with the Blessed Virgin, of Chichele’s College. The present heraldic glass was recently inserted as a gift from All Souls’ College, Oxford, another of Archbishop Chichele’s foundations.

On either side of the window are image niches. These are now filled with copies of the figures at either end of the Grammar School across the churchyard and represent, on the left Henry Beaufort, Bishop of the Diocese (then Lincoln), and later Cardinal and Chancellor of England; and on the right, his half-brother King Henry IV. A well preserved piscina remains in the South wall. In the North wall is the partially blocked up doorway which once opened on to the crypt staircase.

Beneath the Chapel is the crypt with a vaulted roof of chamfered stone. Here no doubt the Bedesmen kept their stores, and maybe prepared their meals and washed. An ancient drain, such as was common in monastic or other houses of the period, runs from a recess in the north side under the churchyard to the Castle moat.

Though blocked from the crypt end, it is in working order, and was cut through recently where it runs under the grass verge of Midland Road and has given rise to the usual tales of a "secret" passage.

During excavations made over a century ago there was discovered in the crypt, what was claimed to be a Roman lamp. It was probably a cresset. The Bedesmen had ceased to live in their accustomed style, and one is tempted to wonder whether it was Roman or whether it was the lamp which was lit when the old men filled in at half-past six of a winter’s night in their black frieze cloaks with a red star of the order on their breasts, to say their prayers and to sit by the fire for an hour before it was "put forth" and they retired to bed.

It is now well over two hundred years since the Bedesmen lived in Bede House, and the charity is administered by town authorities. The 12 Bedesmen and the Bedeswoman, who receive a pension, are elected by a committee. The men still retain their overcoats with the red star and are worn at Civic occasions. The common life and the requirements of prayer and worship have long since, ceased to be observed - save for one solitary occasion. The old statutes made provision for a "Gaudy", or Feast, on S. Thomas’ day and the men were to collect alms towards this "beginning" on the Feast of s. Thomas-before-Christmas (i.e. S. Thomas the Apostle, December 21st) the feasting to take place on the Festival of S. Thomas-after-Christmas (S. Thomas of Canterbury, December 29th) -the latter saint being the patron of the Hospital - and in any case the feasting would take place during the Advent season prior to Christmas. But the two S. Thomases seem to have become confused as time has gone by and now the actual "Feast" is held on S. Thomas-before-Christmas. On this day the Bedesmen are still required to attend a service, after which repair to the Bede House, there to eat heartily, smoke their pipes and sing their songs together and no doubt, like generations of Bedesmen before them, recall the excitements of bygone days.