Dear Parents
For nearly 15 years I have come to work every day in an 800 year old office, which once was the Abbott’s “Great Chamber”. It is where successive Abbotts worked, slept and planned the future. It would have been much more austere then, with no wifi and no carpet and none of the children’s artwork but it clearly was the centre of operations. There was a time when the Abbotts had the power of life and death over local criminals, who threw themselves on their mercy. The Abbotts of Battle were powerful men in charge of vast estates ranging as far as Devon.
The room I occupy is a quarter of the size of what was once here. It was originally not dissimilar to the present Abbott’s Hall, just up one storey. What stories,( the other sort), this room could tell if buildings could talk!
I have always felt nothing but good Feng Shui in this room, which has served different generations in different ways. It was once a dormitory, where the present Chair of the former pupils’ association(BAFPA) slept. It was also part of the Head of Boarding’s flat and for the last twenty years has been the Headmaster’s office.
There is a small church in Tasmania where they claim to have the stained glass from the original Abbott’s “Great Chamber”, removed during Cromwell’s time, when his men ravished the churches of the country, removing signs of idolatory and smashing stained glass windows. Immediately adjacent to my office is the Abbott’s former private chapel, deconsecrated now, but still revealing traces of the old wall paintings with which it was once adorned. In addition to that, there are traces of the red lines the monks painted on top of the plaster of the Abbey, still there, since the great fire of 1931 did not reach the chapel. All of the stone work in the Abbott’s Hall was, until 1931, completely covered in white plaster.
Abutting my office on the north side is a hollow tower. Did a spiral staircase once offer the Abbott a second means of exit in case anyone knocked on his door, who he did not want to see? Now there’s a thought!
Best wishes,
Roger Clark
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