http://boar.org.uk/abiwta5BourneAlmonry2.htm Latest edit 1 Aug
2009
©R.J.PENHEY2008
Bourne Archive.
The
Photographic Evidence for the Site
of the Abbey Almonry. Continuation.
The easternmost of the blind arches has
been widened, particularly at its head, so as to provide a doorway of useable
size. While the rest of the wall is of limestone, the rough vault of the arch in
the thick tower wall is of brick. It is not easy to be sure of its age since it
is thickly painted but it looks like eighteenth century work. Though well
disguised, the doorway is detectable in the face of the masonry inside the
church. It was perhaps intended as an entrance to the parish church for the
household of the lord of the manor of Bourne Abbots, who lived in the adjacent Abbey
House.
However, the tower stump into which it leads
appears never to have been completed and not to have been in use as part of the
church, until it was roofed and renovated for church use, after the demolition
of the house in 1879. The north-west tower stump may therefore have contained
part of the premises of the house. This might account both for the modest
nature of the doorway and its close connection with the apparent wash-house (features C & D).
Though it is not a use which would come immediately to mind, the inside of the
roofless north-west tower may have served as a drying ground for the
household’s laundry. It would have kept its linen discreetly away from public
view.
Figure 2. The stone benches are more
evident in this view.
Figure 3. The eighteenth
century adaptation of the easternmost arch to make a doorway through the tower
wall. That opening was in turn, blocked in the nineteenth century.
