Timekeeping Institutions in the Later Middle Ages

Late-Medieval Monasteries

Late-Medieval Monasteries

This focuses on monastic institutions — abbeys, priories, and nunneries – in England at the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII in the 1530s. Most of the buildings, and even more of the internal documentation of these institutions was destroyed at that time, or soon after the Dissolution.

Such communities were, it has often been argued, particularly conscious of time, and active in timekeeping, because of the daily liturgical timetable. ‘Church time’ long predated mechanical clocks, and focused on services timed in relation to noon, midnight, dawn, and sunset, rather than clock hours.

Due to the massive destruction, monastic evidence on clocks is far too sparse for negative evidence to carry any weight except where documentation is unusually abundant. The data here are a compendium of the positive evidence recorded in various sources, some of them quite anecdotal. The maps are best regarded as a work-in-progress that may, over time, be augmented as more evidence surfaces. They should not be interpreted as anything more than suggestive of the prevalence among institutions of different type and size of timekeeping using clocks.

The database contains the following information, where available, for more than more than 400 institutions.

  • Gross income
  • Monastic Order
  • Institutional type
  • Number of monks/nuns
  • Evidence for clock-time

Gross and net monastic incomes at the Dissolution were recorded by Royal Commisioners in a survey assessed in 1535, known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus. These data were published at various points in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the nearest to a definitive list produced by the Russian scholar Alexander Savine in 1909. Savine’s list provides the basis for the income figures, but they are not complete. This is partly because of omissions or inconsistencies in the original returns, but also because Savine’s list is not complete.

Savine’s information has been supplemented in three main ways. In the few cases where he seems to have inadvertently omitted an institution from his list, they have been made good from other secondary sources quoting the original returns. Second, the original commissioners varied in whether they recorded gross income, net income, or (as usually) both. Where only net income is given (this affects a handful of isolated parishes across the country, and the whole of the counties of Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire), gross income has been estimated based on a regression of gross income on net income for all the places with both figures. Lastly, where possible, Savine’s list has been supplemented with information on the number of monks or nuns present, excluding novices, taken from either those signing the formal surrender document, or from numbers given by the commissioners.

There is no source that provides, even ineffectually, a systematic source of information on monastic clocks. The information presented here has been assembled from numerous published and documentary sources traceable through the maps.

Evidence for clock-time use in pre-Reformation monasteries takes various forms, which are distinguished in the maps.

  • There may be direct evidence of the keeping of a mechanical clock to provide an hourly signal. This evidence may take various forms:
    • The physical survival in situ of parts of a medieval clock. Instances are very rare, and include archaeologically excavated clock. components, as well as clocks or clock parts remaining in churches.
    • Records of expenditure, usually overseen by a sacristan (or a sub-sacristan in larger monasteries) in charge of church fabric.
    • Complaints that the performance of clocks has deteriorated, or is neglected.
    • Reference from external sources and narratives to people in the surrounding area knowing the clock-time because of the striking of hours (and sometimes quarters) on a church clock.
  • There may be direct instructions that a clock be amended or installed, issued to an abbot, prior, or nunnery from the relevant holder of a Visitation, usually a Bishop, but sometimes another head of monastic house appointed by the monastic order in question.
  • The existence of a mechanical clock may be implicit in the routine use of clock-time in ordinary activities. This may appear in various types of formal and informal narratives and letters.