Whitegate 1850
WHITEGATE is a parish which contains the townships of Darnhall, Marton, and part of Over. In this parish is VALE ROYAL, the seat of the Right Hon. Thomas Cholmondeley, Baron Delamere, formerly the Monastery of St. Mary. It appears from the Chronicle of Vale Royal, that King Edward I, when Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, having been in danger of shipwreck on his return from the Holy Land, made a vow to found a convent of Cistercian Monks. Some time after, having been taken prisoner during the Baron’s wars, and confined at Hereford, the monks of the neighbouring monastery of Dore visited and consoled him in his captivity; out of gratitude for which, he determined to fulfil his vow, by taking them under his protection.
In the year 1273, he removed them from Dore to Dernhall, in Cheshire, where they stayed only a few years, their patron having determined, after he became King, to build a new Abbey for them on a neighbouring spot, then called Quetenne Hall, or Wetene-Hall-wez, to which their founder gave the name of Vale Royal.
The first stone of the new monastery was laid on the 6th of August, 1277, by King Edward I, in the presence of Queen Eleanor, and several of the nobles, after which the Queen laid a stone in her own name, and another for her son Alphonso. In the meantime, a small temporary building was prepared near Vale Royal, into which the monks removed from Dernhall, in 1281, and continued in it during the time of the first four abbots. King Henry III, in the fifty-fifth year of his reign, addressed a letter to all abbots and priors throughout the kingdom, recommending them to furnish the monks of the Cistercian abbey (newly founded by his son Edward) with books of divinity.
It was in 1330, that the monks of Vale Royal removed to their new and splendid mansion, for the building of which there had been issued from the royal treasury, the sum of £30,000. The solemnity of the removal was kept with much magnificence, and attended by a great concourse of prelates, nobility, and gentry. The royal founder endowed the monastery with the manor of Dernhall, and several other surrounding manors. The abbots enjoyed under the founder’s grant, many great privileges, among which was an extensive right of the advowry, or probation of criminals; and the power of life and death within the manors of Dernhall, Over, and Weaverham.
The tenants of the monastery, it would seem, soon became disgusted with their landlords the monks, and this disgust at last broke out into acts of personal violence. In 1321, some of the monks passed beyond the limits of their domain, were attacked by the Bulkeleys, the Leightons, and the Winningtons, and only saved themselves from violence by their activity. In the same year, John Boddesworth was less fortunate, he was cruelly murdered by the Oldyntons. In 1329, a quarrel ensued between the abbot and the inhabitants of Dernhall; an appeal to arms was the consequence, but they were subdued, and most of them made their submission to the abbot with ropes round their necks. Ten, however, forfeited all their goods and cattle. Seven years after, an insurrection of the Dernhall and Over tenantry, of a more formidable nature took place. The abbot, enraged at their proceedings, threw the ringleaders into prison, and the tenantry again became the victims of monastic oppression.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century, an order was issued to Richard Sutton and Arian de St. Pierre, as Sergeants of the Peace, to seize the abbot and certain of the monks, who were charged with giving succour to the banditti which then infested the county; indeed, one of the monks was actually charged as a principal; but so far did the ecclesiastical rights of the time obtain, that the sergeants reported on this precept, that the abbots and monks remained within their own demesne, and could not be seized without infringing the rights of the Holy Mother Church. Indeed, an indirect sanction to the fraternity was given by the King himself, for he ordered that the privileges of the monastery should be repeated.
John Buckley, the thirteenth abbot, distinguished himself by taking command in person of the tenantry of the abbey at the battle of Flodden Field. They amounted to 300 men. The last abbot was John Harwood, a man of considerable talent and unbending firmness, and upon him as the head and representative of the monastery, fell all the troubles of the Reformation.
At the reformation, among the persons selected for the inspection of religious houses in Cheshire, was Thomas Leigh, Esq., who wrote to this effect, as to the morality which prevailed in the “monastic seclusions of austere virtue”.
“That there lackythe nothing but good and godly instruction of the rude and poor people, and reformation of beddies in these p’tyes, for cetyn of the knights and gentlmen, and most com’only all, lyvyth so incontinently havynge ther co’cubynes openly in ther houses wt or vi of ther children putting from them ther wyfes, that all the contrey therat be not a letill offyndyd, and taketh evil example.” It is said that the abbot was allowed to end his days on a small annuity.
The abbey, with the whole of its extensive estates, were now seized by the rapacious monarch, and in the third of Henry VIII the site of the once famous abbey of Vale Royal, the Grange of the Cornesby, Bradford, Ernesley, and Merton, Petty Pool Hill, and Dam, and Bradford Mylne, in Whitegate parish, together with Hefferston Grange and Ouston Mylne, Ernsley House, and Oakmere Pool, were granted to Thomas Holcroft, the great persecutor of the monks, for the small sum of £450 10s. 6d., subject to a reserved rent to the King of £3 5s. 8d. The same year, Sir Rowland Hill, Knight, had a grant of Dernhall with its appurtenances. In the 57th of the same reign, Sir Thos. Holcroft obtained the entire manors of Over and Weaverham, for £464 10s. 10d. The Bishop of Chester was presented with the impropriation and advowson of Weaverham. The actual revenues of the Abbey were estimated in the 18th of Henry VIII at £548 4s. 11d., and some idea of the splendour of this establishment may be formed from the circumstance that Cromwell himself was the Abbot’s Seneschal, who had the power of life and death in the courts of Over and Weaverham.
The present mansion of Vale Royal is pleasantly situated 2 ½ miles W. by S. from Northwich, on a gentle elevation near the banks of the Weaver, and consists of a centre, with two wings of red sand stone. It commands a delightful view of the Vale of the Weaver, which is here crossed by the Grand Junction railway, on a lofty viaduct of five arches of 63 feet span. The basement of the Hall appears to be a portion of the old Abbey. The greater part of the former edifice was rebuilt, in the time of Elizabeth. The old house was lighted by windows projecting from the centre, several towers ornamented at the front, and a great flight of steps ascended to the great hall, which occupied nearly the whole of the first floor of the centre.
The steps and towers, however, are now removed, the wings shortened, and large windows introduced at proper intervals. It now bears no features of monastic gloom, and the approach to it through a beautiful park, is singularly striking. The present entrance is by a beautiful porch in the centre of the front, a long corridor from which leads to the anteroom, which is hung round with implements of war, and the horns of deer, &c. The windows of this room, and the corridor, are enriched with a profusion of stained glass, chiefly heraldic. From this room is a communication with the sitting-room and domestic apartments, which are superbly furnished. The Hall is a noble room, seventy feet long, the roof supported by carved ribs of oak; this is hung round with family and other portraits, some of which are the production of Rubens and other eminent masters.
The Old Hall of Vale Royal suffered considerably during the civil wars from the soldiers of Cromwell, by whom it was plundered, and it is said that only one piece of plate left by them in the house was gold slaver, enamelled with the arms of Lady Cholmondeley. At that time they drove away some cattle, when a white cow broke away from them, and found its way home from a considerable distance. The breed is supposed still to exist, and is shown at Vale Royal, the ears tipped with red.
The several GRANGES of Hefferston, Hernslow, Merton, Bradford, Conwardsley, and Knights, were included among the possessions of the Abbey of Vale Royal. They still enjoy prescriptive privileges. Knight’s Grange, one of the largest farms in the neighbourhood, pays only a shilling as the tithes due to the Vicar of Whitegate. Merton Grange has been taken down.
VALE ROYAL is the seat of the Right Hon. Thomas Cholmondeley, Baron Delamere.