Dale Abbey

 While we're in Derbyshire (see previous post), we'll stop awhile at Dale Abbey.

There was once a baker of Derby who, once he'd put bread on his family's table (so to speak), went to his local church and gave all else of his earnings to the poor. After a while, the BVM appeared to the baker and told him to drop everything and set up an hermitage at Depedale. The baker hadn't a clue where Depedale was, but he headed out of Derby nonetheless. He found it: a marsh in the middle of nowhere. Dispirited, he turned around, and lo! he found a friendly rock, so he carved a little hermitage out of it.

One day, the local lord saw smoke coming from this rock and thundered over to tell someone where to go... but then he saw it was a holy, poor hermit and instead gave him the land and a bit more. The baker-hermit built a dwelling and an oratory.

Around 1160, Serlo de Grendon, husband of the lord's daughter Margery, on the advice of his godmother, the Gomme of the Dale (I think I shall be called Gomme by my godsons - the stuff of legend), invited some Austin canons over from Calke. But these canons, finding themselves in a woodland, forgot themselves and took to hunting and enjoying themselves. Serlo's son William sacked them and replaced them with Premonstratensians. These white canons didn't last long, overcome by poverty. William was dispirited. But his cousins Matilda and Geoffrey de Salicosa Mara (which I take to be the sallow mere) came to the rescue and endowed and re-founded the monastery with white canons from Newhouse, Lincs.

All this, and more, is written in the chronicle of Thomas de Muskham, one of the canons.

Here's the thirteenth-century seal. A pointed oval, with BVM and Babe under a pointed arch and on top of a trefoiled arch with the abbot praying, with his pastoral staff. On either side are mini-towers with trefoils. The legend: S' ECCLESIE : SANCT : MARIE : DE : PARCO : STANLEE. (Stanley Park being the land next to Dale that the Sallowmeres gave.)