The Cathedral’s service team are a skilled group of craftsmen who work alongside the stonemasons and make sure that things run smoothly for the various buildings and departments around the site. Their seventeenth century counterparts might well have been familiar with the wide variety of things they were called upon to do. It is fortunate that some of the early seventeenth century documents that survived destruction during the civil war era name individual craftsmen and enable historians to trace some of the projects they worked on in the course of a typical year. For the archive of Worcester Cathedral this is more unusual than you might imagine.
Our story begins in December 1610 when a Cathedral employee called Walter Drew was paid for mending the pavement of the church and the cloisters. A few months later in 1611 Walter was paid for working with others in pinning and repairing the cracks that had opened up over the quire area in the vaulted ceiling. A few weeks later he was working with three other labourers in building up the stone of the leaden steeple, the freestanding medieval bell tower which was located on the north side of the Cathedral. This last project dragged on for several more weeks. He hadn’t finished there before other things were occurring that required his attention. This is known because in the same year he was paid for obtaining three barrels of lime for these building projects and then for helping to load blocks of stones at Battenhall Manor for their transport back to the Cathedral for use in building repairs. He was also given responsibility for organizing the carriage of fourteen loads of the stone in May 1611. In between transporting stone to the Cathedral site, he had to spend at least four days digging around in Canon Ferryman’s Garden, searching the ground for a fault in the River Severn wall.
By August 1611 Walter was mending the pavement of the cathedral church again and then in September he was employed in tiling and repairing the house of Mr. Thomas Tompkins, the cathedral organist. He had to bring another nine loads of stone down from Battenhall Manor to the Cathedral to be reused in building work. Despite all this work, Walter’s wages were so low, or perhaps his work was so valued, that his wages were augmented by quarterly payments that year of 3s 4d per quarter.
Some employees, however, were specialists and they usually tended to do specific tasks. Francis Biddle the cathedral carpenter had to do various jobs such as making an entirely new frame for four of the Cathedral’s lesser bells. Together with other carpenters, who were perhaps hired on a more short-term basis, Francis had to hew elm trees and work on repairing the bell [frames?]. By April 1611 Francis with a team of workmen had been tasked with removing the Bishop’s throne from its existing location in the Cathedral, carrying it to the other side of the Cathedral, then building a set of steps to it once it was set in its new location.
Francis was required with other employees to haul trees up from the slip which had been floated up the river to use in the Cathedral in December 1610 and remove old timber from the tower steeple and take it into the separate leaden steeple nearby. He was paid along with his apprentice to add trusses to a corner of the old medieval leaden steeple to allow stonemasons to work there in safety.
Henry Hornbee was another specialist: a lead worker or plumber. In 1611, he was busy together with a colleague repairing the aqueduct and working on the ‘Tower steeple’ and its gate. By March 1611 he and two other men were employed for over a week in repairing the lead on the roof of the quire on the south side of the building and the roof of the leaden steeple, as well as on the cloister roof for another day’s work. Interestingly, when Hornbee was no longer available, the Cathedral simply asked one of their existing craftsmen to do his job. In 1618-1619, Walter Drew had clearly also taken on the role of plumber, being paid to cast lead as well as carry out similar tasks that he had done in 1611. By 1639, the aqueduct pipes that brought clean water to the Cathedral and its residences needed repairs on sixteen occasions and Walter was paid to deal with these.
Robert Kettle specialized in repairs relating to the cathedral bells and clocks. However, even he was occasionally required to work on extra projects, such as in April 1611 when he was paid for making nine yards of wainscotting as well as locks, keys and hinges. There is only one reference to a Richard Chadburne, a local blacksmith, who was paid for making iron work in the leaden steeple, but he may have been brought in just for this project.
If most of these men were staff, why were they not recorded as getting annual wages in the accounts like the lay clerks, choristers, cleaners, butlers, cooks or vergers? In a previous blog about the Elizabethan Cathedral, it was shown how some staff do not appear in the accounts, but did have employment contracts, which show up elsewhere in the archive[i]. It is reasonable to assume something similar in the early Stuart era. Since the treasurer’s account for 1611 shows these craftsmen getting paid for specific work done on the site, they may have been contracted to work on a much more freelance basis.
By 1667, after the civil war when the Cathedral was undergoing a huge restoration programme to repair the damage caused, the accounts are less detailed but they do show a Richard Drew doing various repairs around the Cathedral. Perhaps this was a son or grandson of Walter Drew who had been at the same place fifty-seven years before. The lives of ordinary people who worked on keeping the Cathedral in good condition may be largely unknown to us from many eras of history but in 1610-1611 at least we have a glimpse of their lives in a busy Cathedral over 400 years ago.
David Morrison
Bibliography:
Worcester Cathedral Muniments A26 Treasurer’s Accounts 1611 to 1669
[i] https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2021/11/10/work-at-worcester-cathedral-in-the-elizabethan-era/
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