Plaque number 78 can be found at this location.
The plaque can be found besides a gateway to the Council House on Bourne Hill.
The O/S grid position is SU 14732 East 30308 North.
Within these grounds
stood the college of
St. Edmund 1268-1546.
This house was built in
the early 18th century
by the Wyndham family.
The house and grounds
were bought by the
corporation of the City
of New Sarum in 1927 to
commemorate the 700th
anniversary of the
granting of the first
charter to the City
and are thus preserved
for the benefit and use
of the citizens.
J .C.Hudson. Mayor.
This plaque commemorates the purchase of Bourne Hill House and its grounds and, by a ‘happy coincidence’, the celebrations held to mark the 700th anniversary of the city’s first charter. It brings together three strands of the city’s history – the College of St Edmund, the Wyndham family, and the charters. Bourne Hill House has recently been in the news because of a major and controversial refurbishment and extension beginning in 2007. The project won a Civic Society award in April 2011 and a Royal Institute of British Architects award in May 2011.
The College of St Edmund was founded by Bishop Walter de la Wyle and commemorated St Edmund of Abingdon (Edmund Rich), the cathedral’s former treasurer, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been canonised in 1246. In a charter of 17 February 1269 (see below the section titled: A note on dates), the foundation provided for a provost and thirteen priests living communally next to the then new parish church of St Edmund. They were to serve the parish and to study. They were in addition required to observe the canonical hours (seven services per day and one in the night), to dress modestly and –weather and health permitting – to participate in major festivals in the cathedral.
It soon became clear that the arrangements made for funds and supervision were inadequate. In 1339 Bishop Wyville complained that there had never been more than 7 priests in the College since its foundation. In 1394 the provost Adam Charles was called before the bishop and charged with neglecting to say Mass regularly and failing to maintain the correct number of priests. In 1431 the provost William Spalding was suspended on account of his dissolute style of life.
One source of income was from societies who paid for Masses to be said for the souls of their members (see plaque 18 ). In the early 15th century the guild of Jesus Mass and the Holy Cross supported one of the St Edmund’s altars. In 1447 the tailors’ guild of Salisbury founded a fraternity of the chapel of St John within the college. Nevertheless a visitation in 1478 found that there were no priests in residence.
The college was suppressed and passed into royal hands at the time of the Reformation. In 1543 William St Barbe, a layman and Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, was appointed provost. In 1547 the Mayor of Salisbury took possession of the college in the king’s name and sold it to St Barbe for £400.
Ownership of the College passed through several hands until 1660, when it was sold to Sir Wadham Wyndham, a Somerset gentleman and King’s Bench Judge. Sir Wadham converted the college for residential use. By the eighteenth century it was known as Wyndham House and in 1788 it passed to Henry Penruddocke Wyndham (Mayor of Salisbury in 1771) who commissioned the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell to make changes to the house. It remained in the ownership of the Wyndham family until 1869 when it was put up for auction by the trustees of the will of Wadham Wyndham III. In 1873 the house was bought by the Reverend George Hugh Bourne who added the North Wing. The house was used as a college until 1885 when it became the Rev Bourne’s home and came to be generally known as Bourne Hill House. In 1926, a year after Bourne’s death, the house was sold to St Edmund’s Private Hospital Ltd who mortgaged it to the Salisbury Diocesan Board of Finance.
On being elected Mayor of Salisbury on 9 November 1926, J C Hudson told the City Council that one of his colleagues had started preliminary work on celebration of the 700th anniversary of the city charter, which was to fall in the following year. On 3 December the Mayor promised council members that they would shortly hear something that would ‘capture their imagination’. This turned out to be (as reported on 10 December) a proposal for a pageant to be jointly organised with the Dean of Salisbury. No mention had yet been made of St Edmund’s college, which the Council was about to consider in an entirely different context.
The newly formed Wiltshire branch of the National Playing Fields association met on 17 December and bemoaned the general lack of sports fields and the danger this posed to the health of the nation. The Mayor was among those attending and said that Salisbury ‘had its eye on an estate in the centre of the city which would cost several thousand pounds’ but would provide ‘playing fields and also a very delightful spot for those of riper years’. The Salisbury Journal editorial column identified this ‘estate’ as being the college and its grounds.
Action soon followed. On 24 December the Council unanimously decided to buy St Edmund’s College and its associated grounds for £8500. Councillor Haskins said that the College building was ‘a very fine one of its kind and had a tremendous lot of room. He could see great possibilities there for the Corporation’ especially as Salisbury appeared to be falling behind other similar towns and cities in having suitably dignified municipal offices. The Mayor added that the purchase would lend ‘a practical touch to the sentimental view they [i.e. the Council] were taking of the celebrations of the 700th anniversary next year. He thought that that might be stated in an inscription which could be placed at the entrance to the property’ and thus was born the idea of a commemorative plaque.
Nevertheless this still suggests that the link between the purchase and the anniversary was an afterthought. A public meeting was held on 15 February 1927 to consider what form the anniversary celebrations should take. It was decided that a celebration including a historical pageant with actors portraying important personages from the city’s history would commence on 29 June. The city giant and Hobnob would appear. There would be marching bands and carnival floats. Representatives would be invited from namesake cities around the world. There would be a children’s parade. As far as a permanent memorial was concerned the Mayor said that the Council ‘had nothing in their mind as to what would form a permanent commemoration of the anniversary but after they had purchased St Edmund’s College and grounds, they considered that nothing could be a more fitting commemoration of the celebration’. Accordingly it was arranged that the building and grounds would be formally handed over to the Council on the first day of the celebrations.
The celebrations made a great impact on one young citizen, Arthur Maidment, who was especially excited because the first day coincided with an almost total solar eclipse (there would not be another comparable until 1999). At 10 a.m on 29 June he and his parents watched as the civic procession made its way along Blue Boar Row. He was impressed by the number of dignitaries and the sight of the city macebearers, describing the procession as ‘possibly the most splendid and at the same time the most dignified in the city’s history’. After a service at the Cathedral, the procession made for the new Council House (St Edmund’s College) for the formal handing over. After the ceremonial cutting of the tape the civic representatives headed back to the old Council House (nowadays the Guildhall) for lunch. This can hardly have been a leisurely meal, for by 3 p.m. an even more splendid procession had formed up in the Close and set off around the city. For Arthur Maidment, the star attraction was the historical pageant with floats depicting the seven centuries of the city’s history. It filled him, and no doubt many other onlookers, with civic pride. Many of the city’s voluntary organisations and sports clubs were represented, and young Arthur noted "I have a lasting memory of the Swimming Club attired very correctly in view of the heavy rain in bedraggled swimming costumes (suits came later) and each and every member looking as though they had great difficulty in stopping their teeth from chattering"
The weather throughout was dreadful. The children’s parade, due to take place next day, had to be postponed until the day after, and even then the rain did not let up until 6 p.m., by which time many of the children were soaked to the skin. But the event, though delayed, exceeded expectations. Three thousand children took part in depictions of leisure pursuits and seasonal festivities through the ages. Arthur was there, in his by now dripping cricket flannels. Not far away was a contingent from St Paul’s School dressed as Old Sarum Archers, an eighteenth century archery cub, among them 10-year old Stanley Pittman. Stanley did not suspect, perhaps, that one of the young ladies from the Highbury Avenue school team (Edna Carnell) would one day be his wife.
And so the procession moved off. The Christmas tableau featured an enormous Yule log, which seemed to move under its own steam but was, in fact, propelled by a cunningly hidden teacher. Arthur Maidment summed it all up "The mind boggles at the hours and hours which hundreds of parents and teachers must have put in to produce to produce this wonderful display and ponders why the Good Lord could not have entered into the spirit of the occasion and given the event some decent weather."
A photo of the new Council House appeared in the Salisbury Times on 1 July with an editorial: -
"The happy coincidence has often been commented on that the house and grounds that the corporation purchased should have been available just at the moment when the question of commemoration was under consideration. Those who purchase Alderman Haskins’ latest work [reference 6] will find that the site and premise were more or less linked with the city for almost the whole of the seven hundred years since the granting of the charter."
Henry III granted two charters to Salisbury in 1227. The first, granted on 30 January of that year, confirmed royal approval for the moving of the cathedral from Old to New Sarum and granted extensive liberties. These included:
• freedom from tolls throughout the kingdom
• the right to build walls around the city (but a licence was later needed to add battlements – see plaque 85)
• the right to hold an annual fair
• the right to build or alter roads and bridges, provided that the rights of others are not infringed
• that New Sarum would be a free city in perpetuity, with its citizens having the same rights as those of the citizens of Winchester
The second charter was granted on 23 March 1227. This gave citizens specific freedom from any form of labour service, which was one of indicators distinguishing a free man from a serf. The greater part of the charter deals with the bishop’s right to receive the proceeds of justice (amercements) which would otherwise have gone to the king. An amercement was a fine imposed by a court not for a crime (the punishment for which was death, mutilation or outlawry) but for a misdemeanour such as failing to bring a criminal to justice, or making a mistake in legal proceedings. ‘You were almost bound to come out of court poorer than you went in’, it has been said, ‘whether you were there as plaintiff or defendant, pledge or juryman’. For the person to whom they were due, therefore, amercements could be a considerable and steady source of income. Bishop Richard Poore paid 300 marks (£200) for this charter but probably got the best of the deal.
The Salisbury charters were among the first issued by Henry III under his own seal rather by the council which had been advising him (he was only nine years old when he became king). Both charters granted rights via the bishop rather than to a city corporation. As was pointed out by ‘JJH’ in a Salisbury Journal article at the time of the 1927 celebrations, the charters make no provision for a mayor to be elected, though this may have been implicit in that Salisbury citizens had the same rights as those of Winchester.
John Cattrell Hudson was mayor for the year 1926/27. Born in Oxfordshire, he worked in Andover and London before becoming editor of the Salisbury Times in 1900. In 1917 he was elected to represent the Fisherton ward. In 1927 he was managing director of the Salisbury Times. He was a public benefactor. Part of his estate was bequeathed to the city for the purchase of open land and was used to buy what is now Hudson’s field.
The plaque gives the date 1268, while the St Edmund's college charter is dated 1269. This may arise from confusion about when the first day of the year fell. There were four possible starting dates for the year:
a) 25 December – Christmas day
b) 1 January – the feast of the Circumcision
c) 25 March – the Annunciation (Lady Day)
d) Easter
The date of St Edmund’s charter (17 February) would fall at the end of 1268 by one reckoning, and towards the beginning of 1269 by another. During the Middle Ages, general English practice shifted from (a) to (c) - see plaque 5.
1. The Salisbury Journal – 3,10, 17 and 24 December 1926, 11 and 18 February, 1 July 1927
2. The Salisbury Times 1 July 1927
3. Medieval Sourcebook: Henry III: Documents of church of Salisbury in the early 13th Century –pages 175-178 and 180-182
4. www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1227salisbury.html
5. Under Salisbury Spire – Arthur Maidment – published by the Salisbury Journal 1993
6. Salisbury Charters and the history of St Edmund’s College - Salisbury Times 1927. This was published in commemoration of the 700th anniversary of the first charter and of the acquisition of the college. It comprises an introduction by the Mayor, a translation of the city charters by the Cathedral Chancellor, and a history of the college by Alderman Haskins.
7. King John –WL Warren – Eyre and Spottiswood 1964 (see pages 150 – 151 concerning amercements)
8. The fine roll of Henry III, 28 October 1226 – 27 October 1227 (Sophie Ambler www.finerollshenry3.org.uk/content/month/fm-12-2007.html)
9. The English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest
10. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Sir Wadham Wyndham by Stuart Handley
11. England under Norman and Angevin Kings 1068 -1225 – Robert Bartlett – The New Oxford History of England - 2000
12. History of Modern Wiltshire - Hoare, Benson and Hatcher – published by John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1843 (the volume on Salisbury)
13. Salisbury - a third selection in old photographs, collected by Peter Daniels 1982
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