We visited St Albans Abbey (Cathedral) on May 27th, 2024. This structure is also known as “St Albans Church” – due to how its interior has been used since the “Dissolution” during 1539. It was also used as a “Prisoner of War” (POW) holding area during the English Civil Wars (1640s) and a “Court” during the reign of Elizabeth I. I visited around 20-years ago and remember reading that the “Clock Tower” was one of the first in England following the “Dissolution of the Monasteries”. Prior to the 1530s, life in England was regulated by the daily cycles of the monasteries – which often possessed clocks and monks who could read dials.
Ordinary peasants and aristocracy would get out of bed in the morning, work, eat, rest and go to bed at night according to the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church – the monasteries of which usually followed the Rule of St Benedict – or some similar Rule. Ordinary people did not have to learn how to tell the time – as the monastic orders told them what to do and when to d it. Following the “Dissolution” – secular society had to build their own clocks and learn to tell the time for themselves. This is how the measuring of “time” was rescued from the control of the Church. After 1539 – time no longer served God – but rather the lay-society that paid for and possessed the technical skills to construct the clocks! The policies of King Henry VIII – as mad as he may or may not have been (he had around 70,000 men and women hanged during his reign) – ushered the “modern” Britain that we now live within. I doubt, however, that Henry would have envisioned the end of absolute monarchy or the trivialising of the Church!
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 