In the following year and on the same feast of St. Hilary, which fell on a Sunday, Waltheof[1], a kinsman of William le Gros and prior of Kirkham in Yorkshire, went to Thornton, taking with him twelve canons of Kirkham, whom he established in the new monastery, constituting one of them named Richard the first prior. He was afterwards made abbot by a bull of Pope Eugenius the Third.
It seems probable that at this early period and for many subsequent years, the buildings were merely of a temporary nature. We learn from the chronological history of the abbey, a valuable manuscript to which reference will be made hereafter, that the stone for the great altar was purchased in 1262, in which year the dormitory was roofed. In 1263 the foundations of the body of the church were laid[2], and it was still building in 1282 when the chapter-house was begun. The choir of the church appears to have been covered in by the year 1315, when certain payments were made for painting the roof, and the chapter-house which was commenced in 1282 was paved in 1308. In the year 1323 a new cloister and kitchen were built; the former was roofed in 1325, in which year we find an entry of payments for the foundations of the columns of the church, possibly of the nave. The presbytery in the choir was built between 1443 and 1473.
Thus it appears that the church alone was in progress daring a period of nearly two centuries: and perhaps no better materials are extant for illustrating the gradual advance of a great monastic edifice than those collected by the curious, but nameless, monk of Thornton, who, in the early part of the sixteenth century, when the abbey was yet flourishing, and all its muniments were in existence, applied himself to collect the names of the "masters of the fabric," and to discover the dates of the several parts of the building.
After increasing in wealth and power under a succession of twenty-three abbots during a period of 402 years, the community of Thornton was suppressed[3] in 1541, and a portion of its revenues applied to the endowment of a college, consisting of a dean and prebendaries, dedicated to the Holy
- ↑ Wallevus: his name does not occur among the priors of Kirkham in the last edition of Dugdale's Monasticon.
- ↑ Fundamentum ecclesiæ corporis.
- ↑ At the Dissolution it consisted of six monks, with the following servants:—a larderer and potager; a master cook, with three boys; a cow-herd and two boys; two swine-herds; a carter and poulterer; three gardeners and their boy; a curer of herrings; the sub-cellerer's boy; a messenger, and a keeper of ducks or wild fowl.
