The History of the Pepperpot

If you look at map of the Isle of Wight, you’ll see it takes the form of a diamond sitting just off the south coast of the Big Island, mainland England, across the Solent from Portsmouth and Southampton.

The southernmost tip is known as St Catherine’s Point; it’s flanked by the village of Niton to the East, and Blackgang Chine to the West.

Looking inland, you’ll see St Catherine’s Hill looming in front of you, topped off by St Catherine’s Oratory, commonly known as the Pepperpot.

In the early 1300s, in the reign of Edward II, the sea provided as much of an income to the Islanders living thereabouts as the farming. And not just from fishing…

…but also from wrecks.

In year of 1313, on the Sunday after Easter, the Saint Mary, of Bayonne, went down on Atherfield Ledge in Chale Bay. Carrying 174 tuns [large casks, each containing approximately 252 gallons] of white wine from France, the majority of the crew survived, and many of the barrels were washed ashore.

Local architect, archaeologist, and writer, Percy Stone, a resident of Merstone, related the tale of what happened next in his collection of poems, Legends and lays of the Wight, published in 1912.

St. Catherine’s, Percy Stone, 1912

https://archive.org/details/legendslaysofwig00ston/page/30/mode/2up?ref=ol Legends and lays of the Wight by Stone, Percy Goddard

Publication date 1912

pp. 31-37

ST. CATHERINE’S (1314)

On a stormy night in the winter of 1314, one of a fleet of ships chartered by merchants of Aquitaine to convey a consignment of wine to England, struck on the treacherous Atherfield ledge with the result told in the legend. An account is given — in the Abbreviation of Pleas, Hilary Term, 1315 — of the merchants’ claim for redress against Walter de Godyton, urging the cargo was no ‘wreck of the sea.’ Certain it is that De Godyton built the oratory and pharos on the down, as an inquisition as to its endowment, held in August 1328, states that he was the founder and that it was built ‘to give light to those sailing these perilous seas by night.’ The amount of wine in question was considerable, being one hundred and seventy-four casks, each of the value of five marks, of which De Godyton had fifty-three. How Holy Church came in is not so plain, but a Papal Bull threatening excommunication was fulminated against the delinquent unless due restitution and penance was made. The rest is legend.

Wild sweeps the wrack from the gates of the West.
Loud roars the rage of the sea;
Bitter the edge of the Atherfield-ledge,
From the which God keep us free!
White gleam the teeth of the surges high
And glisten the rocks for their toll;
Black race the clouds o’er the face of the sky
Like fiends in pursuit of a soul.
Go, all who have kin on the sea this night
And pray on your bended knee;
That, while you sleep, the good Lord will keep
Those who sail on this storm-swept sea.

The ‘Bon Venture’ of the Abbot of Quarr
Is home from the land of France,
Deep lade with cloth and the good red wine
That makes the red blood dance.
The leadsman checks the knotted line
That guides the helmsman’s hand,
The look-out’s beard is stiff with rime
As he strains his eyes for land.
‘I cannot the narrowing coast descry,
Nor the Abbey’s beacon see.
Christ’s body! We’ve missed the Needle’s eye,
And there’s broken water a-lee.

‘Now, lady of Whitwell, be our aid —
We vow thee an altar light.
Good Nicholas, saint of shipmen bold.
Preserve us all this night.’
But the pitiless wind and the treacherous tide
Hold the good ship in their sway;
In vain the anchor is cast — it drags.
She strikes ere break of day.
And it’s, oh! the crash of timbers rent,
By the grim rocks’ savage edge.
And it’s, ah! the shrieks of drowning men
Who for want of a light must perish this night
By the cursed Atherfield-ledge.

Sir Walter de Godyton sits in hall
And makes him right good cheer:
‘A stormy night on the shores of Wight
Should drive the wreckage here.
Good ship oak to mend the hearth,
Rich stores that may not sink,
And, if perchance she hail from France,
Good Gascon wine to drink.
So haste ye down by morrow’s dawn
And search along the bay
For flotsam and jetsam — ‘Tis my right,
Which none shall me gainsay.’

The Abbot of Quarr in his chapter-house
Reclines in his oaken stall,
And the monks sit round on the narrow bench
That skirts the pillared wall.
They weigh the convent’s state full well
And deal with the good and ill,
And reckon the rents of the broad fat lands
They own in dale and hill.
Anon they ‘re aware of a hatless man
At the arch of the cloister door.
‘Father Abbot,’ he cries, ‘a wreck she lies.
Your ship, on the southern shore.’

‘She drove on the teeth of the Atherfield-ledge,
In the storm of yesternight;
Between the rocks and the waters’ swirl
She was gone ere morning light,
And her cargo lies scattered along the shore
From Chale to Compton-chine —
Corded bales of broidered cloth
And casks of Gascon wine.
And, good Father Abbot, alack-a-day,
The worst is yet to tell:
The lord of Gotten hath seized the whole
And defies you, book and bell.’

The Abbot starts from his cushioned seat
And his brow grows black with wrath.
‘By our Lady of Quarr, I’ll have the law
Of the rogue!’ he thunders forth.
‘With ruffled plumes and ratings sharp
I’ll send this hawk to perch.
Who dares to lay his greedy claws
On goods of Holy Church.
Haste, Brother Gervase, warn him well
Who would with abbots cope.
An he refuse, we’ll bear the news
To His Holiness the Pope.

The lord of Gotten he laughed aloud When the message he received.
‘So it’s leaving home on a journey to Rome
Is your master. News, indeed!
For the empty threats of a greasy monk
I care not a maravedi.
I’ll hold to my right like a gallant knight —
All else may go hang for me.
Possession’s nine points of the law, I’ve heard,
So tell this abbot of thine
I’ll clothe my men in his dornix cloth
And drink his Gascon wine.’

The Abbot has sought his father the Pope
And unfolded his tale of woe.
And the Pope has sworn by his triple crown
That the matter shall not rest so.
‘The scurvy knight shall feel the might
Of Holy Church,’ quoth he,
‘Go, bring me candle, book, and bell,
I here pronounce decree.
Be he living or be he dead,
Be it early or late,
No prayers for him shall hence be said —
Be he excommunicate.’

The Abbot he hies him home again
And gathers his chapter round.
‘I ‘ve here,’ said he, ‘the Pope’s decree,
‘Twill bring this knave to ground.
I’ll teach him pious monks to flout
And Holy Church defy.
This robber Knight, despite his boast,
Peccavi soon shall cry.
Go wide proclaim him now without
The Church’s pale to be.
Who’ll win the fight ‘twixt Church and might,
We’ll see right speedily.’

So Gotten’s lord ere long doth feel
The weight of Church’s hand.
For none will bring him bite or sup
And none will till his land.
All Church’s rites from him withheld,
He’s now in parlous way;
Of all he meets, there’s none that greets
Or gives him e’en good day.
‘Alas! my deeds on me recoil,
My sins I here declare;
I will ere too late to the Abbey gate,
And crave for mercy there.’

Sir Walter had saddled his hackney stout
And sought the Convent gate,
But the doors are shut against the face
Of the excommunicate.
‘I have sinned, I have sinned, Father Abbot,’ he cried;
‘Take pity — take pity on me.
I here repent of a life misspent,
Annul this fell decree.
Remove this ban from me and mine;
I’ll restitution make,
And any penance Mother Church
Doth set, will undertake.’

Whereat the oaken gates swing back.
And he falls on bended knee
As the Abbot, with chant and incense sweet.
Comes forth to set him free.
‘Of a life misspent, an thou true repent.
This shall thy penance be —
On Catherine’s height shalt burn a light
And pray for those at sea.
A beacon fair of goodly stone
Shalt rear on the cliff’s steep edge,
That never again in the annals of Wight
A vessel be lost for need of a light
On the deadly Atherfield-ledge.’

So he rose from his knees all humble wise
And led his horse within,
And he took the vows of the brotherhood,
Salvation’s crown to win.
‘Thy blessing, my father, thy blessing I crave.’
‘My son, Benedicite.
Sir Walter de Godyton erst thou wast,
Brother Walter henceforth shalt be.’
So he builded the Tower of Island stone
And he set the lamp therein,
And ever at night he tended the light
And thus atoned for sin.

By day he prays for all mankind,
By night he trims the lamp
On the lonely crown of Catherine’s Down,
Where the mists hang chill and damp.
In storm and stress that beacon bears
A welcome message far.
And shipmen call a blessing down
Upon its guiding star.
And the good monk vows at the altar’s step.
As the flame shines clear and bright,
‘No vessel more on that treacherous shore
Shall be lost for want of a light.’

According to chapter of IV of Edward I’s Statute of Westminster of 1275, CONCERNING Wrecks of the Sea, it was agreed “That where a Man, a Dog, or a Cat escape quick out of the Ship, that such Ship nor Barge, nor any thing within them, shall be adjudged Wreck”; any goods washing ashore from them would be held for a year and a day so that the owner could reclaim them.

Some stories have it that the survivors proceeded to sell the wrecked barrels at a discount rate; but whatever happened that night, the barrels made their way into the hands of the Islanders.

The merchants who had lost their goods were, unsurprisingly, not very happy about it, and took the case to court in Southampton at the start of June; they appealed their £1000 loss, perhaps three quarters of a million pounds in today’s money, perhaps more, with charges laid against those who ended up receiving the goods.

The case dragged on in further sessions until a hearing in the first week of Lent the following year, February 1314. Islander Walter de Godeton, of Gotten Manor, was charged with receiving over fifty barrels of the salvaged wine and fined a considerable sum: 150 pounds or so in the money of the time. To compel the payment of such a hefty amount, much of his goods and lands were seized until payment could be made.

The fine does not appear to have changed his attitudes much though: his name appears again court records of 1323 regarding receiving goods from the wreck of the Jesus Christ, a Portuguese cargo vessel wrecked off Brighstone in 1318.

But the story doesn’t stop there for de Godeton. At least some of the cargo that had been lost from the St Mary had been destined for a monastery in Northern France; to plunder it was sacrilege. According to web legend / some accounts, the Pope summoned de Godeton to the ecclesiastical court in Rome, where he was told that he would be “excommunicated from the church and his soul would be damned to burn in Hell for all eternity” unless he performed an act of penance. To atone for his sin, he agreed to provide a ‘chaunting priest’ to say masses for his soul, for those of his ancestors, and for all those souls lost at sea, along with ‘a light for the benefit of mariners, to be lit every night for ever’. The site was to be on Chale Down, where a smaller hermitage had been established the previous year. Although only the foundations of the oratory have survived as earthworks still visible today (??), the lighthouse remains in the form of the 35 foot high tower known locally as “the Pepper Pot”, Britain’s only surviving medieval lighthouse. (Only the Roman lighthouse at Dover is older.)

The old lighthouse itself has an eight-sided pyramid shaped roof with eight rectangular openings, unglazed windows, you might say, to allow the light from a fire set at the top of the tower to be seen at sea. The four buttresses that strengthen the lower part of the tower were not part of the original lighthouse, but were added in the 18th century.