Blanche Heriot was a legendary heroine from Chertsey, Surrey, whose story was brought to a wider public in two works by the Chertsey-born early Victorian writer Albert Smith.
Blanche Heriot was a legendary heroine from Chertsey, Surrey, whose story was brought to a wider public in two works by the Chertsey-born early Victorian writer Albert Smith.
In 1842 Smith's first play, Blanche Heriot, or The Chertsey Curfew, was produced at the Surrey Theatre. "As a native of Chertsey," wrote Henry Turner in Clement Scott's magazine The Theatre, "he was naturally acquainted with the local legend of the heroic girl who, in order to gain time for her lover's pardon to arrive, and so save his head from 'rolling on the Abbey mead,' clung to the clapper of the enormous bell in the belfry tower, and thereby attained her object." The Irish actress Maria Honner "was the heroine and her portrait (life-size) was on every hoarding in London, swinging to and fro with her hair streaming in the wind." [1]
In 1843 Smith published The Wassail-Bowl: A Comic Christmas Sketchbook, Volume II [2] of which included a short story, "Blanche Heriot: A Legend of Old Chertsey Church", on the same subject as his play of the previous year. A summary of "Blanche Heriot: A Legend of Old Chertsey Church" follows.
Blanche Heriot is a young woman, living in Chertsey during the Wars of the Roses. The story is set in May 1471 when Edward IV of England, the first and longest-serving Yorkist King, has just won back the throne from his cousin.
Blanche has a lover, Neville Audley, who has been away in the wars, fighting for the Lancastrians. He returns to Chertsey with a price on his head and is intent on fleeing to the Continent. However, he is apprehended by Yorkist soldiers in Chertsey. He kills one soldier and a dog and flees to Chertsey Abbey, seeking sanctuary.
Neville, however, is arrested and sentenced to die at curfew the next day. A mutual friend of Blanche and Neville, Herrick Evenden, agrees to take a token (a ring given to Neville by a nobleman from the Yorkist side for Neville sparing his life) to London to call in that favour by in turn sparing Neville's life. With only five minutes to go before curfew bell will toll, Herrick is seen by townsfolk approaching Laleham ferry, half a mile away, on his return from London. Realising that Neville's life depends on her delaying the curfew, Blanche runs to the bell tower and ascends the old stairs. She crouches down beneath the bell and clings onto the clapper. Despite being dashed against the bell and frame, she holds on until the sexton (accompanied by soldiers) decides to climb the tower to investigate. Just then, Herrick Evenden arrives with a pardon for Neville. Following his release, a party ensues at the local hostelry, and Neville and Blanche are married shortly afterwards.
Albert Smith completes the story with a reference to the motto inscribed around the band of the Curfew Bell, "Ora mente pia pro nobis, Virgo Maria". This was the fifth bell in the ring of eight at the medieval parish church, St. Peter's, Chertsey. It was cast circa 1310 and re-cast circa 1380 for Chertsey Abbey by the Wokingham founders who were linked to the Abbey. On the dissolution of Chertsey Abbey in July 1537, it was moved from the abbey church just behind the other medieval church, which was left for plunder of its stone.
A bronze statue of Blanche Heriot by Sheila Mitchell F.R.B.S stands in Chertsey. [3]
Lydia Sigourney wrote an article, "Love and Loyalty", which appeared posthumously in Peterson's Magazine in September 1865. [4] This is highly likely to be based on the Blanche Heriot story. It was then picked up and formed the basis [5] of the narrative poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" by Rose Hartwick Thorpe in 1867.
The main specialist gynaecology clinic of St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey is the Blanche Heriot Unit in her honour. [6] [7] [8]
The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey, is located in the English county of Gloucestershire. A former Benedictine monastery, it is now a parish church. Considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain, it has the largest Romanesque crossing tower in Europe.
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in which the ringers commit to memory the rules for generating each change, or by call changes, where the ringers are instructed how to generate each change by instructions from a conductor. This creates a form of bell music which cannot be discerned as a conventional melody, but is a series of mathematical sequences.
Campanology is the scientific and musical study of bells. It encompasses the technology of bells – how they are founded, tuned and rung – as well as the history, methods, and traditions of bellringing as an art.
Albert Richard Smith was an English author, entertainer, and mountaineer.
A curfew is an order that imposes certain regulations during specified hours. Typically, curfews order all people affected by them to remain indoors during the evening and nighttime hours. Such an order is most often issued by public authorities, but may also be given by the owner of a house to those living in the household. For instance, children are often given curfews by their parents, and an au pair is traditionally given a curfew by which time he or she must return to his or her host family's home. Some jurisdictions have juvenile curfews which affect all persons under a certain age not accompanied by an adult or engaged in certain approved activities.
Chertsey is a town in the Borough of Runnymede, Surrey, England, 29 km (18 mi) south-west of central London. It grew up round Chertsey Abbey, founded in 666 CE by St Erkenwald, and gained a market charter from Henry I. A bridge across the River Thames first appeared in the early 15th century. The River Bourne through the town meets the Thames at Weybridge. The Anglican church has a medieval tower and chancel roof. The 18th-century listed buildings include the current stone Chertsey Bridge and Botleys Mansion. A curfew bell, rung at 8 pm on weekdays from Michaelmas to Lady Day ties with the romantic local legend of Blanche Heriot, marked by a statue of her and the bell at Chertsey Bridge. Green areas include the Thames Path National Trail, Chertsey Meads and a round knoll with remains of a prehistoric hill fort known as Eldebury Hill. Pyrcroft House dates from the 18th century and Tara from the late 20th. Train services are run between Chertsey railway station and London Waterloo by South Western Railway. The town is within the M25, accessible via junction 11.
A church bell in Christian architecture is a bell which is rung in a church for a variety of religious purposes, and can be heard outside the building. Traditionally they are used to call worshippers to the church for a communal service, and to announce the fixed times of daily Christian prayer, called the canonical hours, which number seven and are contained in breviaries. They are also rung on special occasions such as a wedding, or a funeral service. In some religious traditions they are used within the liturgy of the church service to signify to people that a particular part of the service has been reached. The ringing of church bells, in the Christian tradition, is also believed to drive out demons.
A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle – traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic – and moves the arm to make the hinged clapper strike the inside of the bell. An individual handbell can be used simply as a signal to catch people's attention or summon them together, but handbells are also often heard in tuned sets.
Bellfounding is the casting and tuning of large bronze bells in a foundry for use such as in churches, clock towers and public buildings, either to signify the time or an event, or as a musical carillon or chime. Large bells are made by casting bell metal in moulds designed for their intended musical pitches. Further fine tuning is then performed using a lathe to shave metal from the bell to produce a distinctive bell tone by sounding the correct musical harmonics.
Tom Tower is a bell tower in Oxford, England, named after its bell, Great Tom. It is over Tom Gate, on St Aldates, the main entrance of Christ Church, Oxford, which leads into Tom Quad. This square tower with an octagonal lantern and facetted ogee dome was designed by Christopher Wren and built 1681–82. The strength of Oxford architectural tradition and Christ Church's connection to its founder, Henry VIII, motivated the decision to complete the gatehouse structure, left unfinished by Cardinal Wolsey at the date of his fall from power in 1529, and which had remained roofless since. Wren made a case for working in a Late Gothic style—that it "ought to be Gothick to agree with the Founders worke"—a style that had not been seen in a prominent building for a hundred and fifty years, making Tom Tower a lonely precursor of the Gothic Revival that got underway in the mid-18th century. Wren never came to supervise the structure as it was being erected by the stonemason he had recommended, Christopher Kempster of Burford.
A "ring of bells" is the name bell ringers give to a set of bells hung for English full circle ringing. The term "peal of bells" is often used, though peal also refers to a change ringing performance of more than about 5,000 changes.
Thorpe is a village in northwest Surrey, England, around 20 miles (32 km) west of central London. It is in the Borough of Runnymede, between Egham, Virginia Water and Chertsey. It is adjacent to the M25, near the M3 — its ward covers 856 hectares (3.3 sq mi). Its traditional area with natural boundaries covers one square mile less. Thorpe is a former civil parish.
Barking Abbey is a former royal monastery located in Barking, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It has been described as having been "one of the most important nunneries in the country".
Chertsey Abbey, dedicated to St Peter, was a Benedictine monastery located at Chertsey in the English county of Surrey.
St Nicholas Church is a Church of England parish church in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England.
Sir Anthony Browne, KG of Battle Abbey and Cowdray Park, both in Sussex, England, was a Member of Parliament and a courtier who served as Master of the Horse to King Henry VIII.
St Giles Church is the sole church in the village of Wormshill in Kent. The church is Anglican and is dedicated to Saint Giles. It forms part of the united benefice of Tunstall with Bredgar. The other parishes are Milstead, Bicknor and Frinsted and Rodmersham. The ecclesiastical parish of Wormshill is in the Diocese of Canterbury and the Sittingbourne deanery. It is a Grade II listed building, English Heritage number 1060971.
Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight is a narrative poem by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, written in 1867 and set in the 17th century. It was written when she was 16 years old and first published in Detroit Commercial Advertiser. The poem consists of ten stanzas of six lines each, written in catalectic trochaic octameter; the ending of the last verse of each stanza is a variant of the title.
A death knell is the ringing of a church bell to announce the death of a person. Historically, it was the second of three bells rung around death, the first being the passing bell to warn of impending death, and the last was the lych bell or corpse bell, which survives today as the funeral toll.
