In the days when I came home exhausted from yet another night of doing a gig as night watchman on a building site, I would slump in front of my fire, pour a shot of Cognac (nothing but the best for us guardians of the small hours) and put on a record. No matter what I ended up choosing, my LP of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana always caught my eye.
Orff wrote the music in 1936-37 based on 24 medieval poems that had been unearthed in Bavaria in the early 19th century and was obviously intrigued by the verse which was bawdy and to put it mildly a bit naughty.
Thank goodness it’s mostly in Latin, Old French and even a filter of Old English.
The gist of these songs is that they irreverently poke fun at the Church establishment, written by student monks and clerics to upset their masters, as student bodies do to this day.
The cover of so many versions of the recordings of Carmina Burana have sketches of monks sitting around a big wooden table, tankards of ale raised high, partying to high heaven, very obviously roaring out the words of the poems and having a jolly good, rousing, time.
The depiction of these monks, all show them to be rotund, with full, ruddy cheeks.
Now that doesn’t fit in with the picture of monks that is painted of those who served in Lewes Priory.
They were kept on a fairly meagre diet, spent many hours in prayer and contemplation and were generally a holy lot.
So, was the depiction of a jolly monk on the record sleeve artistic licence?
The conundrum bothered me for many years and was only partly resolved by a 16th century ghost, who was equally as fun loving as I wanted my medieval monks to be. Unfortunately, he was a century too old to be one of them.
On a trip to Michelham Priory one day I was nipped in the bum. Yes, I was pinched and quite hard too. On looking around to see who had launched this perfidious assault upon my person, I could only see a very good-looking lady, a quarter of my age, who was intently studying an icon attached to the Priory wall.
If I was that attractive, then my irritation became quite muted and I preened a little. But only for a Nano second because the lady was in full view and I was pinched again. It wasn’t her.
It seems I was victim of the ghostly presence of Sir Robert Sackville, a relative of Anne Boleyn who had been gifted the Priory by the Earl of Dorset, who in turn had acquired it upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537.
Now this isn’t just one of a scribe’s tall tales. Cases of the ghosts of Michelham Priory interfering with visitors and tourists have been well documented over the years.
And I had been Sir Bob’s latest victim.
Trying to find out a bit more about the Michelham ghosts, also led me to some sort of answer about the Priory’s monks and their similarity to those of Carmina Burana, personified by the rather hedonistic and erotic lot depicted on the LP record covers; a very different character to the Spartan residents of Lewes Cluniac Priory.
Michelham began life in 1229 not as an offshoot of Lewes Priory but as an Augustine Priory, attached to a mother abbey in Hastings.
A different nature to Lewes, you see.
And perhaps for that reason, it never seemed to adopt too much of a holy sheen. It was constantly visited by ‘inspectors’ from the Catholic hierarchy and was therefore constantly reprimanded for its monks’ rowdy behaviour.
Basically, there was a pub situated at the Priory Gates and the thirsty monks seemed to find their way to its snug quarters rather more often than holy orders permitted.
There are vague references to rather more naughty escapades but nothing in writing to suggest the monks were other than pub goers. Perhaps they even joined in the shady songs of the medieval poems as they sat around the fire.
But history is written on the lips as well as in the minutes of meetings, and local people tell tales of really naughty goings on – monks and priests having their way with local maidens, partying frequently, carousing and generally speaking, living a rather unsuitably hedonistic life.
True or not, the monastery certainly didn’t turn out do-gooders. In fact, their partiality for a trip to the gates and the pub seemed to overcome any ambition to do other things and a number of them went AWOL, one for several years.
Despite inspectors paying regular visits, and Priors being warned about the monks’ behaviour, it never seemed to be other than a home for Carmina rowdy monks until it was inhabited by the Sackvilles. Even then, the monks refused to stop their revelry and there are reports of hooded figures roaming the grounds, spooking tourists.
The Priory became part of the collection of buildings that Anne of Cleves was given as part of her divorce settlement from Henry VIII, but once the Dorsets got hold of it they kept it for 300 years.
Thomas Sackville was a domineering character and is reputed to have been a hard task master with his staff. He also is said to have chased his serving girls and maids from the nearby villages of Upper Dicker and Arlington.
It’s Tom that is said to be the mischievous one at the priory that probably nipped my backside. Or was it actually Robert?
A very negative atmosphere is said to invade the house whenever Thomas’s ghost stalks the premises.
Today the house is a tourist attraction run by the Sussex Archaeological Society with a Tudor mansion, seven acres of grounds including a moat and working watermill, a medieval gatehouse and a replica of a Bronze Age roundhouse.
And of course, the various ghosts that like to roam the premises.
There are many stories to tell of the ghostly goings on, the medieval and Tudor history of this elegant country house. But what I want to know is – where exactly was the monks’ pub? And why did Robert’s or Thomas’s ghost choose my bum to nip? These are questions that deserve to be answered. So I shall risk my cheeks on a further visit to try and find out if Carmina Burana verses were inspired by the monks of Michelham Priory and did they sing them in that local pub?
Cases of the ghosts of Michelham Priory interfering with visitors and tourists are well documented