At the east end of the north aisle - i.e. to the north of the chancel - of the Church we come to an area known as St. Catherine's Chapel.

(For those familiar with St. Mary's, this is behind the screen and curtains if approached from the nave - the area now used as a choir vestry and containing the organ; it can also be entered from the chancel from which the "War Memorial" part at the east end is entered)

This provides some links with the church’s medieval past through its origins as a chantry chapel.

Chantry chapels

Chantry creations were a common enough feature of the fourteenth century - a period of bad harvests, starvation, plague, and of obsession with death, fear of the devil, and the afterlife. To secure a swift passage through purgatory and a favourable niche in the world to come, people of substance often gave money or land for the establishment of a chantry. The endowment was to maintain a priest who would say prayers and masses for the soul of the deceased and his family.

Established - 1331

The royal licence to establish the Gillingham chantry was granted to John de Sandhull in 1331, Sandhull being an early version of Sandley (Sandley is a hamlet close to Gillingham, now the home of a famous stud farm). He was enabled to provide ‘a messuage (dwelling) and 58 acres of land and pasturage for six oxen and one heifer … to a chaplain to celebrate divine service in the church of St Mary of Gillingham, every day forever.’ The land involved was that of Chantry Farm and its fields, which later passed to Sherborne School. This area of town is still known as "Chantry Fields" and includes the area where Waitrose and the library now stand. It also seems to have included the part of the town immediately north of the church, since at a later date this also belonged to Sherborne School.

Ended - 1553

John de Sandhull may have hoped that the masses would be said until the end of time, but they came to an abrupt end during the Protestant Reformation in 1553. Edward VI considered chantries to be Catholic and idolatrous, and ordered their dissolution, confiscating their incomes to the Crown. By this time, the Gillingham chantry had been served by twenty-one priests, the last of whom, dom. Richardus Kamell, who had been appointed in 1545, retired with a pension of five pounds per annum.

Subsequently

How the chapel was used subsequently is not known. It was rebuilt in 1839 along with the rest of the church so nothing remains of its medieval origins, though Henry Malpas drawing shows that externally it had a similar appearance to the rest of the north aisle (if we can trust the drawing - it is a mirror image!).

As well as acting as the choir vestry, the eastern end forms a War Memorial area in the Church. It also cotains some of the most interesting of the church monuments.

(thanks to John Porter for most of the information on this page)