A weathered trefoil window on the south face of St Mary the Virgin Church, Bletchingley is tangible evidence of a medieval recluse who lived here in the early thirteenth century. In 1233 King John’s son, Henry III granted a regular supply of wheat for his support. Roger the hermit’s story gives us an insight into one of the most demanding forms of religious life.
Religious men and women of all religions have been inspired to seek closeness to God through solitude. In medieval England at least 780 English recluses have been identified, associated with 600 different sites, mostly rural. These men and women were known as eremites.
Some of these eremites were hermits, who could move about and often lived in isolated places. The majority were anchorites who lived in one spot and were permanently enclosed in small cells, known as anchorholds. In either case, their vocations involved solitude, chastity and orthodoxy.
Anchorites endured their grave-like seclusion in order to connect with God more strongly through their heightened contemplative experience. They also performed a social role.
They provided spiritual advice to parishioners, prayed for the souls of the community, and occasionally distributed small charities. A resident anchorite brought considerable religious prestige to the village that supported them.
Most of the anchorholds in the 13th century were lean-to, timber structures attached to the outside of the church rather than the solid stone-built structures of the 14th century.
While typically built on the north side of the chancel, some, such as the surviving stone-built example at St Nicholas, Compton, were south facing like Roger’s cell.
The example at Compton, show the possible dimensions of Roger’s timber cell, assuming it was built on the outside of the church.
There are two windows close together in the south chancel of St Mary’s Church, the lower one in the form of a quatrefoil, similar in shape to a four-leaf clover, which is now somewhat degraded.
The chancel of the church is thought to have been largely rebuilt early in the 13th century and the south chapel added a little later in about 1230. This is the period when Roger was living at the church.
The lancet windows were blocked up at some time before local historian Uvedale Lambert wrote his parish history of Bletchingley in 1921.
An anchorite cell typically had up to three distinct openings:
The main evidence for Roger’s life comes from the record of the gift Henry III made to him in 1233. The evidence is preserved in the Close Rolls: the official record of royal letters and decrees issued under the Great Seal. It reads:
‘It is commanded to Peter de Rivaux that he cause Brother Roger, hermit of Bletchingley, to have every eight weeks one quarter of wheat for his sustenance as long as it pleases the king, of his grace. Witnessed by the king at Croydon on the twenty-first day of March.’
The recipient of the order, Peter de Rivaux, was a highly influential courtier who served as King Henry III’s Treasurer and controlled many royal assets between 1232 and 1234.
The scale of this allowance was substantial. A ‘quarter’ of wheat weighed roughly 480 pounds (218 kilograms). Providing 60 pounds of grain per week to one person indicates that the grant was intended to support a wider household.
Under church law, anchorites were required to have outside servants (ancillae) to manage daily logistics, fetch water, grind the wheat at the local mill, and bake bread. A standard medieval calculation allocated two to three pounds of bread per day for a working adult. A quarter of wheat was therefore perfectly scaled to sustain a household of three people for eight weeks, with any surplus distributed as bread to local beggars.
The ’king’s grace’ was short-lived. The regular supply of wheat was an order made to Peter de Rivaux personally and it automatically lapsed following his political downfall in 1234 on charges of tyranny and financial corruption. We know that it was not renewed at the transfer of the administration of the wardship of Bletchingley to Richard de la Lade, but we do not know what happened to Roger. He may have gone back to relying on local charity to sustain him at the anchorage.
Henry III had clear personal and political reasons for supporting a recluse in a small Surrey village.
Personally, Henry was known for his intense piety and was a frequent patron of hermits and anchorites across England, unmatched by almost any other English monarch in his personal devotion to them. He often used resources from royal estates to support them.
Politically, the King held direct control over Bletchingley in 1233. While the manor and castle belonged to the de Clare family, the Earl of Gloucester had died in 1230, leaving an eight-year-old heir. Under feudal law, Henry III exercised his right of wardship, temporarily taking over the estate and its revenues until the boy came of age. Because Peter de Rivaux was managing Bletchingley on behalf of the crown, the wheat was almost certainly collected straight from the local Bletchingley tenants, matching local resources to the immediate needs of the anchorite.
Local tradition, championed by Uvedale Lambert, suggests that Roger may have been an early Franciscan friar, pointing to his title "fratri Rogero" (Brother Roger) in the Close Rolls.
The timeline just about makes this possible. The Franciscan Friars Minor arrived in England in 1224 and were expanding through the home counties by the 1230s. Henry III was a significant financial supporter of their movement and other mendicant orders who lived by begging for charitable donations. A friar seeking a bishop's permission to transition from preaching to the isolation of an anchorite's cell fits the religious climate of the decade.
However, historical context suggests caution:
The Franciscan Rule: Friars were expected to travel, preach in public spaces, and beg for their food. In the early days, they walked barefoot from town to town, slept in barns, preached on street corners, and moved on. Voluntarily locking oneself inside a permanent cell directly contradicted early Franciscan guidelines, though St Francis did write a specialized "Rule for Hermitages" for short retreats.
The Language: In 13th-century Latin administrative records, the word frater (brother) was a general honorific. Scribes applied it to Benedictine monks, Augustinian canons, and independent holy men alike. Without the explicit addition of Ordinus Minorum (Order of Friars Minor), the title alone is not definitive proof.
Whether Roger was an early Franciscan friar or an independent holy man, his presence remains an important chapter in Bletchingley's history. The traces of his cell links the parish church directly to the personal piety of Henry III and the regional administration of the royal treasury.
Solitude and Sociability, The World of the Medieval Anchorite, Mari Hughes-Edwards (2019)
Devotion by Donation: The Almsgiving and Religious Foundations of Henry III, (2017), Katie Phillips
Early English Franciscans, (act. 1224–1272), Henrietta Leyser, (2007), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Close rolls of the reign of Henry III, 1902 publication, Public Record Office
Blechingley: A Parish History, Uvedale Lambert, (1921)
St Nicholas Church, Compton, (2012), Len Williams
Depiction of a bishop blessing an anchoress found in the manuscript held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, (circa 1400 to 1410), Unknown artist of the 14th or 15th century.
St. Francis, standing on the frightful rocks of La Verna, (1295-1300), Giotto, Tempera and gold on poplar panel, Louvre Museum