Fund-raising
Every stage of English church architecture is reflected in St Peter’s. Every structural crisis that can afflict a church is also evident in its stones. That it still stands in all its glory is a tribute mainly to its medieval congregation from whose pockets the money came to safeguard it. Six Church Wardens of Wootton had the task of raising the cost of building and repair. From such a large parish potential income was substantial, but much of it was not available for church maintenance or building. Greater tithes, a tenth of the corn and hay crops, went to the Mother House at Conches. Lesser tithes, every tenth egg and such like, went to the Vicar (in theory!). To him went also a number of other charges on the pockets of the parishioners – burial fees, Easter dues, pew rents, hearth penny, plough alms, wax scot and surplice fees.
For routine church building work, certain plots of land were set aside to generate appropriate income. But to meet the cost of new projects or urgent maintenance, the church wardens had to fund-raise. Church Ales were the popular means. Great parties were organised at the main church feast times of the ritual year – Christmas, Candlemas, Easter, Whitsun, St Peter’s Eve, Lammas. In the Church house, at the corner of the churchyard, the ale was brewed and the event was held in the nave, that much- used community hall of the village, or in the churchyard, then free of gravestones in pre- Reformation times. From these events came the money which funded such developments as the south aisle (and its re-build after collapse), the Lady Chapel, the upper tower, the clerestoryed nave, Wootton’s famous set of buttresses and, of course, a succession of new roofs!
Even the Church Ales were not enough. Once, a bell had to be sold!
After the Reformation, like so much else, these old customs slipped. In the 17th Century, St Peter’s came near to total collapse. Meanwhile, the no longer used Church House fulfilled its destiny and became the “Lion Inn”, standing where parishioners park their cars today.
Harewell
The Harewells of Shottery emerged in the late 14th Century as important lesser gentry of the shire who became sub-tenants and managers of the two Wootton manors, those of the Priory and of the Dukes of Buckingham. Their required duties for the Priory included the upkeep of the chancel of St Peter’s and two Harewells are commemorated in the tombs there: John, the armoured knight buried in 1428 and John, his great-great- grandson, a hundred years later, in the fine altar tomb brass. His wife – who in spite of the affectionate double memorial went on to remarry – claimed descent from Alfred the Great.
During these years the Harewells distinguished themselves in local service as sheriffs, coroners, commissioners, Constables of Maxstoke Castle, all the while acquiring land in their own right. But with the death of this John, the male line collapsed. The five little girls on the brass of his tomb went on to inherit the Harewell estates, one of them, Agnes, taking Wootton. Her marriage to a Sir John Smith, an official of the Royal Exchequer, and Tax Commissioner, opened up a new phase of the Wootton saga. The Harewells merged into the Smith-Caringtons who held
the manor until the 18th Century. The Lady Agnes outlived her husband and in 1559, she and her son, Francis, bought the Buckingham manor at Wootton.
It was a historic event. Agnes’ grandmother was a Wogan, a Welsh woman; one of Wootton’s more romantic traditions claims she was descended from the family of Wagen. The Harewells, who may have had the genes of old Wagen in their blood, were perhaps returning to ancient roots – for these lands were those which Robert of Stafford had seized from the last Saxon Thegn in 1066.
Agnes died in 1562 and is commemorated in the small brass fixed to the wall alongside the magnificent tomb of her son, Francis Smith, great- grandfather of the First Lord Carington (see page 23).