DALE CHURCH : ITS STRUCTURAL PECULL\RITIES. 187 



actual hermitage ? or was it built upon the site of it ? or, as 

 Mr. Kerry suggests, alongside it — she seeking " to attach her 

 new chapel to the hermit's oratory, so as to place her sanctuary 

 under the shadow of a building consecrated by so much 

 devotion"? The Norman opening not being a window or 

 doorway, clearly proves the contemporary presence of a 

 chamber on the site of the present aisle. But as it is highly 

 probable that the hermit was dead, does not Mr. Kerry's 

 seem a curious arrangement ? What was this empty hermitage 

 used for ? Would it not have been as much " in accordance with 

 the religious spirit of the times " to have utilised the hermitage as 

 the chapel ? 



(4) But a little circumstance of the Chronicle throws a side 

 light on the matter. Its author, writing a century or more after 

 the event, could state, after narrating the donation of the tithe of 

 Borrowash Mill, "and from that time even unto this day hath 

 that tithe remained to the brothers serving God at Depedale." 

 The Abbey was not at Depedale. Who were these brothers, 

 then ? It is unlikely that a hermitage having been endowed, the 

 endowment would be diverted to other uses, or that the oratory 

 would be left tenantless. May not the words, " brothers serving 

 God at Depedale," refer to a succession oi hermits there? If not, 

 who and what were these brethren? There are, indeed, other 

 indications that the baker had successors. Uthlagus, the con- 

 verted robber, was supposed to have ended his days at Depedale, 

 in secret intercourse, serving God there. And there, also, at a 

 later date, reposed the body of Peter Cook, of Bathley, hermit. 

 Grant a successor to the first hermit, we can then understand 

 why the " Gome's " chapel would be placed alongside his oratory, 

 and why an opening was made between the two, in order that the 

 solitary might receive the benefit of the chaplain's daily ministra- 

 tions at the altar. And, granting that this succession continued to 

 the fifteenth century, we can also understand the panelled 

 partition, with its door, between what we now term the aisle and 

 the nave. 



(5) About forty years later, Dale Abbey was founded, and 



