LAMMANA AND GLASTONBURY LAMMANA AND GLASTONBURY GLASTONBURY

LAMMANA AND GLASTONBURY

Lammana and Glastonbury

Glastonbury, as one of the most powerful religious houses in England, had estates in many counties including Cornwall. One of the most unusual of Glastonbury’s possessions was the island of Lammana^¹ now known as St George’s or Looe Island off the south Cornish coast near West Looe.

A Benedictine community occupied the island as a cell of Glastonbury Abbey from the 12th to 13th centuries; however, it was probably not the first religious community on the island. During the 6th century a small Celtic monastery is said to have existed on Lammana. Amphora fragments from the Aegean dated c500 AD have been found on the island possibly associated with a lann. The place-name Lammana contains the Cornish place-name elements lann [early Christian enclosure] and manach [monk]. A broad ditch appears to surround the summit of the central knoll on the island, perhaps indicating an early enclosed site.^²

It may have been an oral tradition of religious life on the island that led an ancestor of Hastulf de Soleigny to grant it to Glastonbury Abbey before 1114.^³ On the summit of St George's Island are the ruins of a medieval chapel dedicated to St Michael, which pre-dated the mainland chapel. It was a focus for pilgrims on St Michael's Day (29 September). The remains of the medieval chapel consist of a few earthworks on a small platform on top of the island and parts of a column shaft.Various carved stones in the modern garden on the island may have come from the medieval chapel. ^⁴

An island, not always accessible, may have been ideal for a life of prayer and contemplation but was not very practical for ministering to pilgrims who could not always reach the island. Their offerings were probably an important source of revenue for the Benedictine monks who would not want the pilgrims risking their lives if the seas were stormy around Michaelmas. The abbey also owned a strip of land on the mainland opposite the island, included in their Lammana estate. In the 12th century another St Michael’s chapel was built on it, on a sheltered south-facing slope about a mile from the original settlement at West Looe. There may have been a guest house for pilgrims and cells for monks as traces of ancillary buildings, probably dating from the 13th century, survive on the site, possibly re-used in the later Middle Ages to house the priest. It is possible that by the 13th-century the chapel and cell on the island were disused.

Both the island and its mainland dependency, although surrounded by Talland parish and scarcely inhabited, formed an independent parish served by the monks. The Benedictines probably never had more than a prior and one or two other monks on the island. There were only two monks there in 1144 and in 1239 Glastonbury was licensed to sell Lammana,^⁵ although this may not have happened immediately. The abbey owed the earl of Cornwall 10s a year c1345 in lieu of feudal dues owed for Lammana. The money was payable at the castle at Launceston at Michaelmas but a later scribe noted in the abbey cartulary that this was no longer due as they had disposed of Lammana.^⁶ However, the abbey continued to record in the 14th century that some of its tenants owed a horse to take the monks into Cornwall as far as Lammana.^⁷ That implies that Glastonbury monks visited the cell, possibly they used it for rest and recuperation. However, it was probably a drain on resources and in the 1230s the abbey was in debt. The cell had certainly closed before 1289 and the property had been sold.

Lammana passed into the possession of the lords of West Looe manor but the chapel survived, presumably used as a chapel of ease and had its own priest by 1289.^⁸ However, despite its parochial status and priest the chapel was stripped of its endowment under the suppression of chantry chapels in 1548.^⁹ Presumably without its revenue the chapel could no longer be maintained and it appears to have been converted to a dwelling. Pottery from the 15th to 19th century was found on the site. The chapel site then mouldered quietly until late 19th and early 20th-century expansion brought the development of the Hannafore estate. Threats of further development led to the excavation of the site in the 1930s and the discovery of its ground plan and decorated plasterwork in the chancel. A few burials were also discovered.^¹⁰

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1 Sometimes spelt Lamanna.

2 Cornwall Historic Environment Record.

3 D. Knowles and R Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 69, 476.

4 Cornwall Historic Environment Record.

5 D. Knowles and R Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 69.

6 A. Watkin, Glastonbury Cartulary, 580.

7 Ibid, 329; VCH Somerset, IX, 66, 147.

8 N. Orme, Christianity and the Cross, 30.

9 Ibid, 144.

10 Cornwall Historic Environment Record.

Mary Siraut Page 4 Somerset Reference

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